1 


•A 


r 

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■  / 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 

V 


WITH  NOTICES  OF 

ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LAND  TENURES 

» 

| it  ihtvious  Countries. 

BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
'  CHESTNUT  MILL,  MASS. 

BY 


THE  RET.  PATRICK  LAYELLE,  P.P.,  CONG. 


PATRICK  DONAHOE,  PILOT  BUILDINGS, 
19,  FRANKLIN-STREET. 

1870. 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


L jit  (?d\(r 


DEDICATION. 


■ - ♦-» - 

TO  GEORGE  HENRY  MOORE,  ESQ.,  M.P. 

My  Dear  Mr.  Moore, 

To  you  as  a  dear  personal  friend,  an  incorruptible 

politician,  a  sterling  patriot,  and  especially  as  a  true  and 

/ 

constant  advocate  of  the  Irish  tenants’  rights,  and  a  practical 
tenant-righter  yourself,  I,  with  your  kind  permission,  feel 
proud  to  dedicate  the  following  pages.  As  an  accomplished 
scholar,  a  brilliant  writer,  and  a  finished  orator,  your  pre¬ 
eminence  is  admitted  by  all ;  and  if  I  refer  to  it  here,  it  is 
because  you  ever  make  your  intellectual  gifts  and  attain¬ 
ments  subsidiary  to  the  cause  of  creed  and  country. 

A  hundred  cares,  labours,  and  distractions,  must  plead  my 
apology  for  the  many  shortcomings  of  this  little  Work. 
Indeed,  I  can  safely  say  that  I  hardly  ever  sat  down  to  its 
production  without  many,  interruptions — a  very  long  one 
even,  since,  a  few  minutes  ago,  I  began  to  write  these  dedi¬ 
catory  words. 

Hoping,  with  almost  ^very  true  lover  of  his  country,  on 
both  sides  of  the  Channel,  that  such  a  land  measure  as  will 
secure  to  the  Irish  tenant  a  sure  foothold  in  the  land  of  his 


4 


DEDICATION. 


birth,  and  love,  without  interfering  with  any  one  right  of  the 
landlord,  except  the  long  possessed  and  long  exercised  right 

to  do  wrong,  will  become  the  law  of  the  land, 

* 

I  am,  my  dear  Friend, 

Very  truly  yours, 


PATRICK  LAYELLE. 


T*ns  following  pages  are  one  of  the  results  of  the  late 
celebrated  action  for  libel — “  McCulloch  versus  Knox,” 
tried  in  the  Court  of  Queen’s  Bench,  Dublin,  in  the 
month  of  June  last,  and  the  report  of  which  will  he 
found  in  the  Appendix. 

My  original  intention  was  merely  to  address  a  letter, 
through  the  Press,  to  the  present  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  calling  his  special  attention  both  to  that  case 
and  the  case  of  Mrs.  Lavelle,  as  also  furnished  in  the 
Appendix  ;  hut,  in  proceeding  with  the  letter,  I  found  it 
impossible  to  deal  with  the  subject  in  a  manner  any  way 
satisfactory  in  the  columns  of  a  newspaper.  Thus,  what 
was  first  meant  to  be  an  affair  of  a  couple  of  columns  in 
a  journal,  has  resulted,  like  Locke’s  Essay  on  Man,  in 
what  may  be  called  a  book. 

Since  I  wrote  its  first  page,  the  great  Irish  Land 
Question  has  obtained  a  prominence  in  the  public  mind, 
such  as  those  most  interested  in  its  settlement  hardly 
hoped  for  so  soon.  The  London  Times  has  deemed  it  of 
sufficient  importance  to  merit  a  Special  Commission  from 
Printinghouse-square  itself  to  report  on  the  entire  sub¬ 
ject  ;  and  hitherto  the  Commissioner  has  returned  several 
reports — all  admitting  the  absolute  necessity  of  a  final 
adjustment  of  the  great  social  difficulty,  but  all  carefully 


6 


INTRODUCTION. 


avoiding  any  practical  solution.  So  has  the  patriotic 
Irish  Times  sent  out,  not  one  hut  three  Commissioners, 
regardless  of  expense,  two  through  Ireland  and  one  to 
France  and  the  Netherlands,  all  of  whom  have  already 
contributed,  very  largely  indeed,  to  the  general  fund  of 
important  information  on  the  vital  question. 

There  is  also  “  a  chiel”  from  the  Echo  “  taking  notes” 
in  Ireland,  and  with  impartiality  and  considerable  effect. 
The  tone  of  the  London  Times'  Commissioner  has  vastly 
improved  since  the  appearance  of  his  first  communication. 
In  that,  security  of  tenure  seemed  to  him  to  “  amount  in 
substance  to  a  transfer  of  the  soil  from  the  landlord  to 
the  tenant,”  but  in  his  subsequent  letters  he  has  consider¬ 
ably  altered  his  tone. 

Without  venturing  on  any  express  solution,  he  sugges¬ 
tively  propounds  his  earlier  views  in  the  following 
paragraph  : — 

“  The  Irish  land  question  has  become  a  subject  of  wide 
national  interest,  and  v/ill  take  up  a  great  deal  of  the 
time  of  Parliament  in  the  next  session.  As  might  have 
been  expected,  as  it  is  viewed  in  different  aspects  by  dif¬ 
ferent  interests,  opinion  respecting  it  varies  considerably ; 
but  there  is  a  general  conviction  that  some  change  is 
required,  and  violent  measures  have  been  put  forward  as 
the  only  solution  of  the  problem.  Men  of  all  parties  have 
admitted  the  necessity  of  one  reform  of  evident  justice — 
the  securing  the  Irish  tenant  compensation  for  the  im¬ 
provements  he  may  have  annexed  to  the  soil ;  but  several 
bills  introduced  with  this  object  have,  for  different 
reasons,  proved  unsuccessful.  Meanwhile,  even  the  most 
practical  statesmen  allow  that  the  relations  of  landlord 
■and  tenant  in  Ireland  are  not  in  a  satisfactory  state,  and 
reforms  of  a  very  radical  kind  have  been  advocated  by  a 


INTRODUCTION. 


i 


not  contemptible  party.  It  is  urged  that  the  ordinary 
rights  of  ownership  in  land  in  Ireland  must  be  largely 
modified  in  order  to  protect  the  rights  of  the  occupiers, 
and  that,  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  community,  the 
Irish  farmer  should  be  assured  a  firmer  hold  than  he  has 
on  the  soil.  It  is  said  that,  as  Irish  society  is,  the  abso¬ 
lute  dominion  of  the  landed  proprietor  is  irreconcilable 
with  the  public  good ;  that  it  places  his  tenant  in  a  state  of 
mere  dependence  ;  that  rack-rents,  precarious  tenures,  dis¬ 
content,  hatred,  injustice,  and  crime  are  the  miserable  but 
inevitable  results;  and  that  Ireland  can  have  neither  pros¬ 
perity  nor  peace  until  the  occupying  tenantry  shall  have 
obtained  a  more  durable  interest  in  the  land  than  they 
are  likely  to  have  as  things  now  are.  Schemes,  accord¬ 
ingly,  of  the  most  revolutionary  character,  amounting  in 
substance  to  a  transfer  of  the  soil  from  the  landlord  to 
the  tenant,  subject  to  a  quit-rent,  have  been  propounded 
by  men  of  no  small  reputation  in  economic  science,  and 
are  known  to  find  favour  in  the  eyes  of  some  at  least  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  hierarchy.  Even  statesmen  of  the 
highest  distinction,  and  conscious  of  their  great  responsi¬ 
bility,  seem  to  think  that  the  landed  system  of  Ireland 
must  be  changed  in  some  way  that  shall  augment  the 
interest  of  the  occupier  in  his  holding,  though,  with  the 
exception  of  Mr.  Bright,  perhaps,  their  language  has 
hitherto  been  vague  and  undefined.” 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  observe,  that  legislation  on 
such  a  basis  and  assumption  as  this,  will  not  be  even 
illusory.  The  Irish  tenant-farmers  are  now  become  too 
well  “  educated”  in  their  rights,  to  accept  as  final  any 
settlement  not  based  on  the  recognition — the  funda¬ 
mental  truth  that  the  land  is  theirs,  and  that  the  land¬ 
lord’s  right  is  strictly  limited  to  that  of  rent. 

“  God  made  the  land,”  says  Mill;  and  if  we  put  our- 


8 


INTRODUCTION. 


selves  the  question,  as  it  is  put  in  its  own  place  in  those 
pages,  “For  whom  did  He  make  the  land!” — is  our 
answer  to  be,  “  For  a  few,  to  do  with  it  as  they  like,  as 
being  their  own  T  Or,  rather,  “  For  the  many,  for  their 
use  and  benefit,  that  by  their  industry  they  might  deve¬ 
lop  its  latent  powers  of  productiveness  to  the  utmost, 
and  thus  bring  its  produce  to  a  maximum  for  the  common 
benefit  of  all  V  To  our  mind,  the  latter  answer  seems 
self-evident,  and  therefore  incapable  of  proof.  The  land 
tenure  of  evey  other  country  in  the  globe  is  based  on 
the  recognition  of  its  truth.  The  very  Word  of  God 
Himself  declares  it  when  it  says,  “  but  the  earth  He 
gave  to  the  children  of  men.” 

In  the  eyes  of  the  “  Commissioner,”  however,  the 
landowner’s  property  in  the  soil  is  absolute;  he  has  a 
right,  not  merely  to  a  just  and  equitable  rent  from  the 
soil,  but  to  the  very  material  of  the  soil  itself,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  others  whomsover ;  and  the  right  of  the 
tenant  only  extends  to  “  compensation”  for  his  labour 
and  outlay.  The  landlord  neither  laboured  nor  laid  out 
money  on  the  land,  yet  his  claim  to  every  morsel  of  earth, 
stone,  sand,  fish,  game,  minerals,  therein  is  to  exist  for 
ever — it  is  “  revolutionary”  on  the  part  of  the  tenant  to 
ask  a  secure  foothold  on  the  land  that  bore  him  and  his 
sires.  Thus  is  the  fundamental  maxim  of  John  Stuart 
Mill  reversed,  that  “  the  land  of  Ireland — the  land  of  any 
country — belongs  to  the  people  of  that  country  and  the 
Times'  Commissioner,  by  implication,  holds  that  the  land 
of  Ireland,  at  least,  belongs  not  to  the  Irish  people,  but  to 
a  mere  fraction  of  that  people,  and  a  fraction,  for  the 

s  \ 

*  Principles  of  Polit.  Econ.  B.  2,  c,  x. 


INTRODUCTION. 


9 


most  part,  whose  foreign  ancestors  obtained  that  land 
by  confiscation,  spoliation,  and  massacre. 

Land  legislation  in  all  other  countries  has  been  based 
on  this  principle  of  Mill’s  for  ages  past.  It  is,  therefore, 
high  time  that  now,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  the  light  of 
elementary  truth  should  be  admitted  into  the  legislative 
councils  of  England  on  this  vital  question  ;  and  that,  in 
any  measures  to  be  adopted  therein,  account  should  be 
taken  even  of  the  iniquitous,  agrarian  legislation  of  all 
past  times,  with  a  view  of  not  merely  doing  justice,  but 
even  of  showing  generosity,  to  the  long-wronged  tenants. 
And  yet,  “  long- wronged”  as  these  tenants  have  been, 
they  seek  not  for  “generosity” — they  demand  simple 
justice.  They  require,  that,  as  the  sovereign  of  the  realm 
has  no  power  to  limit  the  tenure  of  the  man  who  is 
called  the  “proprietor”  of  the  land,  so  the  “proprietor,” 
on  his  part,  must  have  no  power  to  restrict  the  tenure  of 
him  who  tills  the  land,  and  by  his  toil  and  industry 
makes  it  furnish  food  for  “  owner,”  sovereign,  and  all. 

In  now  dealing  with  this  momentous  question,  the 
legislature  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact,  that  in  the 
words  of  Chief  Justice  Pennefather,  “  The  legislation  on 
this  subject,  is  a  progressive  code,  giving  in  each  succes¬ 
sive  act  additional  remedies  to  the  landlord  (Charge 
in  an  ejectment  case  at  Hilary  Term,  1843).  “  A  code,” 

which  the  learned  judge  himself  summarised,  but  which 
O’Connell  more  fully  illustrated  as  follows  : — 

“It  has,  indeed,  been  said,  that  to  legislate  against  the 
landlord  would  be  to  deprive  him  of  his  property,  or  to  de¬ 
preciate  it ;  and  that,  therefore,  no  law  ought  to  be  enacted 
to  benefit  the  tenant  at  the  expense  of  the  landlord. 


10 


INTRODUCTION. 


“  Those  who  reason  thus  totally  forget  that  several 
Acts  of  Parliament  have  been  passed  in  favour  of  the  land¬ 
lord,  and  against  the  tenant.  Let  there  be  no  Act  of 
Parliament  on  either  side,  and  the  condition  of  the 
tenant  will  be  greatly  benefited,  by  depriving  the  land¬ 
lord  of  much  of  the  legal  machinery  by  which  he  is 
enabled  to  extort  exhorbitant  rents  from  the  occupying 
tenants.  All  that  would  be  necessary  would  be  to  repeal 
a  few  Acts  of  Parliament,  and  to  restore  the  ancient 
common  law  of  England  with  respect  to  the  relation  of 
landlord  and  tenant. 

“For  example — if  there  were  no  Act  of  Parliament 
in  favour  of  the  landlord,  he  could  distrain  the 
tenant  who  owed  him  rent,  but  he  could  not  sell  the 
distress.  The  distress  would  remain  in  his  hands  as  a' 
security  or  pledge,  which  the  tenant  could  at  any  time 
redeem  by  paying  the  rent.  The  Act  of  Parliament, 
therefore,  which  gave  the  landlord  liberty  to  sell  the 
effects  seized  for  rent,  took  away  a  great  benefit  from  tho 
tenant — that  is,  the  right  of  redeeming  his  property; 
and  this  benefit  will  be  more  distinctly  understood,  when 
it  is  recollected  that  property  sold  as  a  distress  is  almost 
always  sacrificed  at  a  miserable  undervalue. 

“  The  next  advantage  which  the  landlord  got  over  the 
tenant  was  by  another  Act  of  Parliament.  If  the  tenant’s 
lease  did  not  contain  an  express  clause  of  re-entry  for 
non-payment  of  rent,  it  was  impossible  for  the  landlord 
to  evict  the  tenant  for  owing  him  rent.  And  even  when 
there  was  such  a  clause  in  the  lease,  there  were  technical 
difficulties  which  made  it  nearly  impossible  to  evict  the 
tenant  for  non-payment  of  rent.  An  Act  of  Parliament 
intervened  on  behalf  of  the  landlord,  and  dispensed  with 
all  matters  of  form.  It  enabled  the  landlord  by  mere 
service  of  an  ejectment  to  proceed  to  evict  the  tenant 
who  owed  him  a  year’s  rent.  If  a  bad  season  occurred 


INTRODUCTION. 


11 


(and  what  is  more  frequent  ?)  or  if  two  bad  seasons  came 
consecutively  (which  is  not  unfrequent)  the  tenant  was  and 
is,  by  this  statute,  placed  altogether  in  the  power  of  his 
landlord.  No  matter  what  improvements  the  tenant 
might  have  made,  if  he  has  not  a  year’s  rent  to  the  day, 
the  landlord  can  evict  him — can  take  the  benefit  of  all 
his  improvements,  and  afterwards  put  him  into  gaol  for 
the  rent,  after  seizing  under  execution,  and  selling  any 
other  property  he  may  have. 

“  The  third  Act  of  Parliament — the  additional  power 
given  to  the  landlords  over  the  tenants — was  this  :  We 
have  seen  that  the  tenant  might  have  been  evicted  by 
the  landlord,  if  his  bargain  was  that  the  landlord  should 
have  a  right  of  re-entry  for  non-payment  of  rent ;  but 
the  landlord-power  over  the  tenant  in  this  respect 
was  increased  by  another  Act  of  Parliament,  which,  even 
in  cases  when  it  was  not  the  tenant’s  bargain  or  agree¬ 
ment  that  the  landlord  should  have  that  power,  which 
was  not  in  the  lease,  yet  the  third  statute  gave  the  land¬ 
lord  that  power,  which  was  not  in  the  lease,  and  enables 
him  to  evict  the  tenant,  as  if  that  power  had  been  in  the 
.  lease. 

“  A  fourth  Act  of  Parliament  gave  the  landlord  this 
additional  advantage  :  that  if  the  tenant,  when  distrained 
upon,  insisted  that  his  rent  was  paid,  and  failed  in  prov¬ 
ing  that  it  was  discharged  to  the  last  farthing — if  his 
proof  of  payment  failed  to  the  amount  of  one  farthing, 
the  tenant  then  is  made  liable  to  pay  double  costs ! 

“  The  landlord-power  over  the  tenant  was  again  in¬ 
creased  by  a  fifth  Act  of  Parliament.  The  ejectment 
against  a  ruined  tenant  was-  an  expensive  remedy.  The 
landlord  is,  therefore,  by  a  fifth  statute,  relieved  from  that 
expense  in  all  cases  where  the  rent  does  not  exceed 
£20,  and  is  allowed  to  evict  the  tenant  by  a  civil  bill 
before  the  assistant  barrister. 


12 


INTRODUCTION. 


“  Another  addition  to  the  landlord-power  over  the 
tenant  was  made  by  a  sixth  statute,  by  which  the  chief 
mode  of  eviction  by  civil  bill  was  extended  to  all  cases 
in  which  the  rent  should  not  exceed  £50  a-year. 

“  Then,  the  common  law  has  been  altered  in  favour 
of  the  landlord  and  against  the  tenant  by  several  Acts 
of  Parliament.  These  Acts  have  totally  changed  the 
relation  of  landlord  and  tenant.  At  common  law,  the 
extraordinary  power,  as  between  debtor  and  creditor, 
which  the  landlord  had,  was  that  of  seizing  the  distress 
for  the  rent  due,  and  holding  it  as  a  pledge.  In  every 
other  respect,  the  landlord  had,  at  common  law,  only 
just  the  same  power  which  every  other  creditor  has  over 
his  debtor — that  is,  the  power  of  sueing  him,  and  obtain¬ 
ing  an  execution  for  the  money  due.  The  result  was, 
that  the  landlord,  in  letting  his  land,  was  under  the 
necessity  of  looking  to  the  character  and  solvency  of  the 
tenant,  and  also  of  leaving  him  the  means  of  paying  the 
rent,  after  deriving  a  support  for  himself  and  his  family 
out  of  the  land.  The  landlord  had  an  interest  in  the  pros¬ 
perity  of  the  tenant ;  for  if  the  tenant  were  ruined,  the 
rent  would  be  lost,  and  the  land  remain  uncultivated.”* 

This  summary  excludes  several  Acts  even  more  odious 
than  any  enumerated.  And  amongst  them  it  excludes  the 
worst  Act  of  all — the  Act  enabling  the  landlord  to  evict 
on  a  six  months’  notice  to  quit — an  act  virtually  giving 
the  tenant  only  a  six  months’  lease  of  his  very  existence. 

Delenda  est  Carthago — tenure  at  will — that  degradation 
of  degradations — a  scandal  to  any  civilized  country,  must 
be  abolished  for  ever.  Power  of  life  and  death  over  the 
many — a  power  wrested  from  the  Sovereign  by  the  Re¬ 
volution,  and  at  the  price  of  oceans  of  blood,  must  no 


*  Public  Letter,  1843. 


INTRODUCTION. 


13 


longer  be  left  in  tlie  hands  of  a  few  at  the  cost  of  the 
peace,  honour,  and  happiness  of  the  country. 

The  only  perfect  parallel  to  the  present  and  past  land 
tenure  of  Ireland,  as  of  the  whole  Irish  land  system, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  agrarian  history  of  England  three 
or  four  hundred  years  ago.  Then,  and  for  a  period  about 
as  long  as  that  of  agrarian  oppression  on  the  one  side, 
and  its  natural  result,  “  agrarian  outrage,”  on  the  other, 
hitherto  in  Ireland,  landlords  evicted  wholesale,  and  the 
evicted  rose,  rebelled,  shot,  and  massacred  the  landlords, 
pillaged  all  before  them,  and  were,  in  due  course,  strung 
up,  by  the  thousand  yearly,  themselves.  But,  as  we  shall 
see,  the  vital  difference  between  the  two  cases  and  periods 
is,  that  while  the  English  Legislature  passed  Acts  after 
Acts,  inflicting  heavy  penalties  on  extermination,  or,  as 
it  was  called,  “  depopulation  of  the  fields” — a  felony 
without  benefit  of  sanctuary  or  clergy — our  legislators 
of  the  present  day  set  a  premium  on  pasture  and  conso¬ 
lidation,  and  thus  proclaim  the  beast  better  entitled  “  to 
inhabit  the  land  and  be  filled  with  the  plenty  thereof  ” 
than  man.  The  late  Lord  Carlisle  declared  so  specially 
as  regards  Ireland,  while  his  Conservative  opponent, 
Lord  Stanley,  on  the  other  side,  has  lately  euphemised 
his  preference  also  for  large  farms  and  the  beast. 

I  trust,  however,  that  the  following  pages  contain 
irrefragable  arguments  in  favour  of  small  or  moderate 
farms,  at  reasonable  rents,  with  perfect  security  of  tenure, 
absolute  independence  of  the  whims,  passion,  prejudice, 
and  political,  or  religious  bias  of  the  landlord.  By  all 
means  let  the  landowner  get  his  due.  To  repeat  it,  over 
and  over,  his  due  is  the  rent  alone.  To  that  alone  is  he 


14 


INTRODUCTION. 


entitled  in  every  country  in  the  world  where  tenancy 
exists  at  all.  In  most  countries  the  tenant  is  his  own 
landlord — small,  indeed,  in  his  way,  the  owner  of  his 
few  acres,  of  which  no  power  but  the  sovereign  will  of 
the  State  can  deprive  him ;  and  thus  and  therefore  as 
independent,  and  indeed  in  his  own  way,  as  happy  as 
the  broadest-acred  noble  in  the  land.  Hence,  his  very 
looks  speak  the  sense  of  self-respect  and  independence 
that  reigns  within.  How  often  was  I  delighted,  in  con¬ 
versing  with  one  of  those  five-acre  proprietors  who 
abound  in  France,  as  they  and  their  families  were 
occupied  in  tilling  that  little  piece  which  they  proudly 
called  their  own,  and  the  fruits  of  which  sufficed  for 
their  necessities  and  rational  comforts?  Their  dreams 
and  thoughts  and  fears  were  not  of  the  odious  approach 
of  the  bailiff,  or  the  stern  voice  of  the  Valentine 
M‘Clutchy,  or  the  crushing  frown  of  the  haughty  owner 
himself,  of  “  Castle  Back-rent.”  How  different  their 
whole  mein  from  that  of  the  wretched  agrarian  “  serf,” 
as  even  the  Times ’  Commissioner  does  not  hesitate  to  call 
a  tenant-at-will  in  Ireland !  In  the  one  there  is  the 
habitual  expression  of  conscious  independence;  in  the 
other,  the  cowering  look  of  the  slave. 

But,  desirable  as  is  a  peasant  proprietorship — nationally 
beneficial  as  it  has  proved  in  every  country  where  it  has 
been  adopted — first  the  very  salvation,  and  next,  the 
wonderful  elevation  of  Prussia — we  do  not  go  so  far 
as  to  demand  it  at  present  for  Ireland.  The  old 
spirit  of  feudalism  is  yet  too  strong  to  be  exorcised 
to  that  extent.  But  we  do  demand,  if  not  “  legal  per¬ 
petuity,”  at  least  such  a  “security”  of  tenure  as  will 


15 


INTRODUCTION. 

amount  to  an  equivalent.  Let  Government  value  the 
rent  every  seven,  or  ten,  or  twenty-one  years,  and  let 
landlord  and  tenant  abide,  during  the  interval,  by  the 
valuation  effected.  Let  the  tenant  be,  ipso  facto,  by 
occupation  secure  of  his  tenure  at  that  rent  until  the 
next  valuation,  and  so  on  to  the  end.  If  he  break  down 
and  become  insolvent,  by  all  means  let  the  landlord 
evict  him  for  non-payment  of  rent,  fully  compensating 
him  for  the  increased  value  which  his  industry  and 
capital  conferred  on  the  land ;  this  increase  to  be  de¬ 
termined  by  official  valuation.  The  question  of  redemp¬ 
tion,  within  a  limited  period,  is  one  of  detail,  and  not 
difficult  of  solution. 

“  A  perpetuity,”  says  Mill,  “is  a  stronger  stimulant  to 

improvement  than  a  long  lease . There  is  a  virtue  in 

‘for  ever’  beyond  the  longest  term  of  years  .... 
Besides,  while  perpetual  tenure  is  the  general  rule  of 
landed  property,  as  it  is  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  a 
tenure  for  a  limited  period,  no  matter  how  long,  is  sure 
to  be  regarded  as  something  of  inferior  consideration  and 
dignity,  and  inspires  less  of  ardour  to  obtain  it,  and 
of  attachment  to  it  when  obtained.”* 

And  why  are  Irish  landlords  so  fearfully  adverse  to 
adopt  a  system  universally  prevailing  “in  all  the  countries 
of  Europe  ?”  Simply  because  they  still  cling  to  a  mono¬ 
poly  of  political  power  by  the  degrading  system  of 
tenancy  at  will.  This  is  the  great  engine  of  the  land¬ 
lord,  for  the  Poor-law  board-room,  the  dispensary,  the 
hundred  and  one  county  appointments,  and  above  all,  for 
the  parliamentary  hustings.  That  engine  once  disordered 
*  Principles  of  Polit.  Econ.  B.  2,  c.  x. 


16 


INTRODUCTION. 


by  any  kind  of  sale  tenure  on  the  part  of  the  tenant,  the 
“master”  can  no  longer  drive  his  serfs  before  him,  or 
drag  him  behind  his  back  to  swear,  as  hitherto,  right 
wrong  and  wrong  right,  and  do  what  their  head  and 
heart  abhor.  A  tenant  in  this  parish,  possessed  of  a 
little  means — not  indeed  accumulated  by  the  land,  far 
from  it — asked  the  landlord,  a  few  years  ago,  for  a  lease, 
offering  to  build  a  good  slated  house,  with  suitable  offices, 
if  he  only  obtained  that  security ;  and  the  worthy 
baronet’s  answer  was — 

“  I  would  as  lief  give  you  the  fee-simple  !”  And  this 
is  the  spirit  that  pervades  almost  the  entire  class.  Yet — 

DELENDA  EST— 

that  spirit  and  the  slavery  which  it  creates  must  be  made 
to  cease.  Under  what  is  called  the  “  freest  constitution  in 
the  world,”  the  millions  must  cease  to  be  the  slaves  of  the 
few  If  law  does  not  accomplish  the  change,  then  Nature 
herself  must  only  step  in,  work  up  her  opportunity,  seize 
it  at  the  proper  moment,  and  repair  and  compensate  for 
the  wrongs  of  delayed  redress  by  appropriations  more 
extensive  than  the  concessions  which  were  humbly  and 
constitutionally,  but  vainly  claimed. 

Such  an  event  may  be  rather  distant ;  but  so  sure  as 
“  progress  ”  is  the  motto  of  civilized  mankind,  so  sure 
will  that  event  be  realized,  if  not  averted  by  legislative 
justice.  Had  the  French  Seigneurs  conceded  in  time  the 
claims  of  common  justice  and  common  sense,  the  peasant 
proprietor  would  not  predominate  so  much  at  this  time 
in  France,  and  all  over  Europe.  England’s  insular  posi¬ 
tion  saved  her  autocrats,  not  from  a  peasant  proprietary, 
which  would  be  her  gain,  but  from  a  peasant  proprietary 


INTRODUCTION. 


17 


the  result  of  confiscation.  Steam  has  bridged  the  Chan¬ 
nel  and— the  Atlantic. 

To  avert  such  an  issue,  by  no  means  improbable  in 
Ireland,  let  her  confer  fixity  of  tenure  with  valuation  rents. 

A  settlement  of  the  land  question  in  Ireland  on  any 
other  basis  cannot  be  final,  and  any  settlement  not  final 
will  not,  in  the  language  of  Mr.  Mill,  be  either  wise  or 
satisfactory. 

My  claim,  or  rather  my  apology,  for  interposing  in  the 
present  lively  discussion,  so  general  on  the  important 
subject,  is  the  very  active  part  I  have  been  obliged,  for 
several  years  past,  from  my  peculiar  position,  to  take  in 
grave  transactions  arising  out  of  the  exercise  of  the 
unlimited  power  at  present  wielded  by  the  Irish  landlord. 
A  resumS  of  these  transactions  will  be  found  in  the 
Appendix,  in  the  shape  of  a  record  of  the  evidence  given 
at  the  famous  trial,  Lavelle  v.  Boyle,  in  Galway,  in  the 
year  1861,  and  that  in  the  not  less,  if  not  more  celebrated 
case  of  M‘Culloch  v.  Knox,  in  J une  last,  in  the  Court  of 
Queen’s  Bench,  Dublin;  with,  also,  my  letter  in  reference 
to  the  case  of  Sir  Robert  Blosse  Lynch,  and  the  corre¬ 
spondence  between  myself  and  the  agents  of  the  late  Sir 
Roger  Palmer. 

During  the  last  eleven  years,  I  could  say  in  truth  a 
day  did  not  elapse  without  my  feeling  deep  anxiety  for 
some  interest,  spiritual  or  temporal,  or  both,  of  the 
tenant  poor  under  my  care — not  a  month  hardly,  without 
my  being  driven  to  take  some  active  part  in  their  de¬ 
fence,  helpless  as  they  were  to  defend  themselves.  It 
will  not,  therefore,  I  trust,  be  deemed  presumptuous, 

though  it  may  be  hazardous,  in  me  to  approach  the 

B 


18 


INTRODUCTION. 


discussion  of  a  theme  on  which  the  brightest  intellects 
of  the  day  have  shed  the  light  of  their  knowledge,  their 
reasoning,  and  their  experience.  Where  Kay,  Thornton, 
Sadler,  Mill,  Godwin  Smith,  Butt,  Heron,  and  a  host  of 
others  have  trodden,  cannot  be  well  approached  without 
risk  to  the  reputation  of  their  follower.  But  I  write  not 
for  reputation.  My  one  object  is  to  concentrate  as  many 
authorities  in  support  of  the  views  which  I  put  forward 
as  will  justify,  at  least,  a  grave  consideration  of  their 
merits.  If,  in  the  course  of  the  struggle  between  right 
and  might  which  is  fast  approaching,  other  views  recom¬ 
mend  themselves  more  to  the  sound  and  unbiassed  mind 
of  the  nation,  while  I  cannot  complain  that  these  latter 
get  a  preference,  I  hold  myself  blameless  and  even 
justified  in  enforcing  my  own,  sustained  as  they  are  by 
so  many  leading  authorities. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  objected,  and  it  actually  is  objected, 
that  the  state  of  the  country  these  two  or  three  hundred 
years,  as  here  described,  does  not  answer  to  its  condition 
at  the  present  day ;  and  I  answer,  that  in  all  its  essen¬ 
tials  it  does.  That  the  landlord  is  as  tenacious  of  his 
absolute  power,  and  often  as  arbitrary  in  its  exercise,  now 
as  ever  before.  Let  the  particular  cases  given  in  the 
Appendix  be  my  proof  for  this.  Nay,  in  some  respects, 
our  condition  is  much  worse ;  for,  whereas  formerly,  even 
a  century  ago,  “  short  leases’'  were  the  rule ;  now-a-days, 
“No  leases”  are  the  motto  and  maxim  of  the  landlord. 
If,  in  days  of  yore,  these  “  short  leases”  had  the  effect  of 
discouraging  tillage  and  depopulating  the  fields,  what 
must  be  the  effect  of  a  total  denial  of  any  lease  at  all?* 


*  See  below. 


INTRODUCTION. 


19 


Nor  have  the  Encumbered  and  Landed  Estates  Courts 
made  matters  generally  better.  On  the  contrary,  pur¬ 
chases  in  them  being,  in  many  instances,  like  that  of  the 
National  Building  and  Land  Investment  Company, 

“  chiefly  for  profit,”  as  the  chairman  of  that  company 
avowed  on  oath  his  was — the  result  almost  invariably 
has  been  an  enormous  and  arbitrary  advance  in  the 
rents  by  the  new  purchasers,  while  the  previous  owner 
took  care  to  raise  the  market  value  of  the  land  by  a 
good  round  increase  of  his  own.  Thus  there  is  a  town- 
land  in  the  very  property  on  which  I  live  paying  treble 
the  rent  it  paid  before  its  transfer.  ^ 

In  any  case,  all  admit  the  abnormal  and  anomalous 
relations  between  landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland.  All 
admit  the  necessity  of  change  therein,  in  the  interest  of 
all  concerned.  Therefore,  if  any  additional  light  can  be 
thrown  on  the  subject  by  a  review  of  its  dismal  history, 
that  review  cannot  be  deemed  a  work  of  supererogation. 

The  journalistic  discussion  of  the  subject  is  confined 
chiefly  to  arguments  on  first  principles,  and  certain  facts 
relating  to  the  present  time  ;  mine  are  mainly  historical. 

I  considered  that  a  resum6  of  Irish  landlordism,  especially 
since  the  “  glorious  Bevolution,”  was  a  desideratum ;  it 
is  now  before  the  public,  who  are  to  pronounce  on  its 
worth. 

The  revelations  which  it  unfolds  place  past  land¬ 
lordism  in  Ireland  in  its  true  light.  It  is  only  to  be 
regretted  that  for  the  most  part  the  landlord  of  to-day 
“  shames  not  his  sire.” 

- “  Duravit  ad  imum 

Qualis  ab  incepto  processerat  et  sibi  constat.  ” 


20 


INTRODUCTION. 


Not  that  there  are  not  some  noble  exceptions  to  this 
monster  character — men  of  heart  and  conscience,  who 
treat  their  tenants  with  justice  and  kindness,  and  in 
return  are  loved  and  respected  by  their  tenants  and 
neighbours.  We  speak  of  them  as  a  class ;  and  as  a 
class  they  are  judged  and  condemned.  The  only  punish¬ 
ment,  however,  which  we  call  for  on  their  crimes  is,  the 
subtraction  of  the  fell  power  of  their  perpetration. 
Hitherto  the  law  has  been  entirely  on  their  side — made, 
as  it  has  been,  by  themselves.  Let  the  “  interest  of  the 
tenant”  now  for  once  enter  into  the  consideration  of 
the  legislature ;  let  not  the  wolf  be  further  permitted 
to  legislate  for  the  lamb,  and  we  shall  hear  no  more  of 
“  agrarian  outrage”  or  of  landlord  and  tenant  murderous 
antagonism. 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


CHAPTER  I. 

A  GENERAL  REfROSPECT. 

It  is  not  the  scope  of  this  Work  to  travel  hack  into 
antiquity,  to  inquire  with  any  minuteness  into  the  agri¬ 
cultural  industry  of  our  distant  ancestors  of  Ireland. 
But  without  labouring  at  perhaps  profitless,  though  not 
uninteresting  research,  we  are  informed  that  even  the 
Firbolgs  used,  like  the  present  Chinese  and  Cashmerians, 
to  carry  clay  in  leathern  aprons  from  the  valleys  to  the 
higher  and  lighter  lands,  to  make  the  latter  productive, 
a  circumstance  which,  with  many  others  furnished  by 
O’Driscoll,  “proves,  beyond  a  doubt,  a  high  degree  of 
national  prosperity,  and  a  population  greatly  exceeding 
what  we  consider  to  be  an  excess  at  the  present  day.”*  And 
lest  it  might  be  objected  that  this  is  driving  back  Irish 
history  to  the  era  of  fable,  Sir  James  MTntosh  informs 
us  that  “  The  Irish  Nation  possesses  genuine  history 
several  centuries  more  ancient  than  any  other  European 
nation  possesses  in  its  present  spoken  language.”! 

Originally  the  soil  of  Ireland  was  parcelled  out  among 
the  tribes  of  which  the  Irish  community  consisted,  so  that  a 
certain  district  belonged  exclusively  to  a  certain  tribe,  por¬ 
tions  in  common  for  grazing,  and  the  rest  apportioned  to  the 

*  Vol.  i,  p.  28.  Also  O’Halloran’s  Introd.,  c.  iii. 

+  Quoted  by  Godkin  Repeal  Prize  Essay,  p.  1. 


22 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


chiefs,  Brehons,  bards,  and  other  families  as  mensal  farms. 
The  strict  and  absolute  ownership ,  however,  could  not  be 
claimed  by  any  individual,  the  right  to  re-allot  and  re¬ 
arrange  being  reserved  to  the  tribe  itself  and  the  tanist, 
on  his  accession.  This  was  substantially  the  same  as  the 
“  village  system”  of  India,  to  which  we  are  hereafter  to 
refer.  A  good  deal  may  be  said  for  and  against  it ;  but 
this  advantage,  at  least,  it  possessed,  that  it  made  the 
power  of  arbitrary  eviction  impossible  in  recognizing  the 
right  of  the  humblest  kern  to  inhabit  the  land  and  live 
on  its  produce,  as  strictly  as  that  of  Brehon  chief  or 
prince.  It  prevailed  universally  throughout  the  country 
up  to  the  date  of  the  Anglo-Norman  invasion  ;  and,  out¬ 
side  the  Pale,  until  the  final  “  Conquest”  of  the  country, 
commenced  by  Elizabeth  and  consummated  by  Cromwell.  (?) 

Up  to  the  period  of  the  Danish  invasions  the  country 
seems  to  have  been,  no  less  socially  than  intellectually, 
in  a  flourishing  condition.  The  devastations  of  that 
period  of  two  centuries  threw  it  backward  in  no  small 
degree,  yet  we  find  it  in  a  process  of  rapid  recovery  when 
the  fatal  landing  of  Strongbow  inaugurated  a  fresh  series 
of  calamities,  keenly  and  universally  felt  thoughout  the 
country,  even  this  very  day.  How  often  the  soil  of  the 
country  was  “  confiscated”  and  “  planted,”  the  native 
chiefs  and  people  banished  or  butchered,  and  their  lands 
and  homes  handed  over  to  the  scum  of  an  English 
soldiery,  “  alien”  in  everything  to  those  among  whom 
they  were  “  planted”  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  it  would 
be  superfluous  to  narrate. 

Enough  that  in  the  words  of  Sir  John  Davis :  “  The 
next  error  in  the  civil  polity  which  hindered  the  per¬ 
fection  of  the  conquest  of  Ireland,  did  consist  in  the 
distribution  of  the  lands  and  possessions  which  were 
won  and  conquered  from  the  Irish.  For  the  scopes  of 
land  which  were  granted  to  the  first  adventurers  were 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


23 


too  large  ;  and  the  liberties  and  royalties  which  they 
obtained  therein  were  too  great  for  subjects.  .  .  .  Thus 
was  all  Ireland  cantonised  among  ten  persons  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  nation  ;  and  though  they  had  not  gained  possession 
of  one-third  part  of  the  whole  kingdom,  yet,  in  title,  they 
were  owners  and  lords  of  all,  so  as  nothing  was  left  to 
be  granted  to  the  natives.”  Precisely  similar  to  the 
policy  of  to-day — aye,  of  the  entire  policy  pursued  during 
the  first  400  years  of  English  rule,  he  says,  that  it  “Drew 
greater  plagues  on  Ireland  than  the  oppression  of  the 
Israelites  did  on  Egypt ;  lasted  400  years,  and  was  the 
most  heavy  oppression  that  was  ever  used  in  a  Christian 
or  in  a  heathen  kingdom  ....  though  it  were  first 
invented  in  hell,  yet  if  it  had  been  used  and  practised 
there  as  it  hath  been  in  Ireland,  it  had  long  since  de¬ 
stroyed  the  very  kingdom  of  Lucifer.”*  And  the  man  who 
wrote  thus,  was  himself  the  instrument  almost  of  as  vile 
tyranny  as  any  that  had  preceded.  We  are  aware  that 
part  of  Elizabeth’s  policy,  as  recommended  and  carried 
out  by  Mountjoy,  was  to  keep  the  land  “  from  manurance, 
and  their  cattle  from  running  abroad that  “  by  this 
hard  restraint  they  would  quietly  consume  themselves 
and  devour  one  another ;  so  that  in  a  short  space  there 
were  no  inhabitants  almost  left,  and  A  most  populous 
and  plentiful  country  suddenly  left  voyde  of  man 
and  beast.”t 

We  have  only  to  open  the  pages  of  Swift,  in  almost 
any  of  those  honest  and  humane  exposures  of  his,  to 
realize  the  terrible  extent  to  which  rackrentism,  absen¬ 
teeism,  absolutism,  and  “  clearing”  was  carried  on  in  his 
day.  Let  us  take  up  only  his  “  Modest  Proposal,”  his 
“  Proposal,”  his  “  Answer  to  a  Memorial,”  his  “  Crafts- 

*  Discovery  of  the  True  Cause,  v. 

+  Spenser’s  View,  p.  165. 


24- 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


man,”  his  “  Answer  to  the  Craftsman,”  his  “  Short  View 
of  the  State  of  Ireland :”  and  in  each  we  have  presented 
before  us  a  picture  of  national  wretchedness,  the  fruit  of 
merciless  landlordism,  not  to  be  equalled  in  the  history 
of  the  globe — no,  not  even  by  the  Zemindar  system 
of  India  itself.  Here  we  must  content  ourselves  with 
an  extract  or  two,  reserving  for  a  future  chapter  “  on 
Clearances,”  more  ample  quotations. 

After  enumerating  the  several  agencies  at  active  work 
for  the  impoverishment  and  ruin  of  the  country,  he  puts 
forward,  as  not  the  least,  the  following  : — 

“  Another  cause  of  this  nation’s  misery  is  that  Egyp¬ 
tian  bondage  of  cruel,  oppressing,  covetous  landlords, 
expecting  all  who  live  under  them  should  make  bricks 
without  straw ;  who  grieve  and  envy  when  they  see  a 
tenant  of  their  own  in  a  whole  coat,  or  able  to  afford  one 
comfortable  meal  in  a  month,  by  which  the  spirits  of 
the  people  are  broken,  and  made  fit  for  slavery — the 
farmers  and  cottagers  being  almost  through  the  whole 
kingdom,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  as  real  beggars 
as  any  of  those  to  whom  we  give  our  charity  in  the 
street.* 

Such  was  landlordism  during  the  entire  of  the  Dean’s 
lifetime — a  hideous,  heartless  thing,  with  no  more 
thought  of  humanity,  not  to  speak  of  Christianity,  than 
is  possessed  by  those  brutes  of  the  fields  which,  as  to¬ 
day,  it  preferred  to  the  image  and  likeness  of  God. 

In  1736,  pasture  lands  were  exempted  from  tithes, 
as  such  an  imposition  “  would  impair  the  Protestant 
interest,  and  occasion  popery  and  infidelity  to  gain 
ground.”!  So  that,  to  the  “Protestant  interest”  the 
agricultural  prosperity,  and  the  social  happiness  of  the 

*  Short  View  of  Ireland.  Works,  vol.  ix. 
t  4  Com.  Journal,  p.  219. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


25 


country  at  large  was  sacrificed  by  positive  law.  Conse¬ 
quent  on  this  premium  on  pasture  came  depopulation  and 
consolidation,  with  all  the  concomitant  horrors,  described 
and  bewailed  by  Swift  and  others,  as  we  shall  see  further 
on.  The  penal  laws,  disqualifying  Catholics  for  long 
leases  (over  31  years),  added  to  the  evils  of  the  general 
chaos.  This  feature  of  the  case  is  vividly  presented  by 
Lord  Viscount  Taafe  in  the  following  sketch  : — 

“No  sooner  were  the  Catholics  excluded  from  durable 
and  profitable  tenures,  than  they  commenced  graziers, 
and  laid  aside  agriculture ;  they  ceased  from  draining 
or  enclosing  their  farms  and  building  good  houses,  as 
occupations  unsuited  to  the  new  post  assigned  them 
in  our  national  economy.  They  fell  to  wasting  the  land 
they  were  virtually  forbidden  to  cultivate,  the  business 
of  pasture  being  compatible  with  such  a  conduct,  and 
requiring  also  little  industry,  and  still  less  labour  in  the 
management.  This  business,  moreover,  brings  quick  re¬ 
turns  in  money  ;  and  though  its  profits  be  smaller  than 
those  arising  from  agriculture,  yet  they  are  more  im¬ 
mediate  and  much  better  adapted  to  the  condition  of 
men  who  are  confined  to  a  fugitive  property,  which  can 
be  so  readily  transferred  from  one  country  to  another. 
This  pastoral  occupation,  also,  eludes  the  vigilance  of 
our  present  race  of  informers,  as  the  difficulty  of  ascer¬ 
taining  a  grazier’s  profits  is  considerable,  and  as  the 
proofs  of  his  enjoying  more  than  a  third  penny  profit 
cannot  so  easily  be  made  clear  in  our  courts  of  law. 
The  keeping  the  lands  waste  also  prevents,  in  a  great 
degree,  leases  in  reversion,  what  Protestants  only  are 
qualified  to  take,  and  what  (by  the  small  temptations  to 
such  reversions)  gives  the  present  occupant  the  first  title 
to  a  future  renewal.  This  sort  of  self-defence,  in  keeping 
the  lands  uncultivated,  had  the  further  consequence  of 


» 


26  THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

expelling  that  most  useful  "body  of  people,  called  yeomanry 
in  England,  and  which  are  denominated  Scullogs  in  Ire¬ 
land.  Communities  of  industrious  housekeepers,  who, 
in  my  own  time,  herded  together  in  large  villages,  and 
cultivated  the  lands  everywhere,  till,  as  leases  expired, 
some  rich  grazier,  negotiating  privately  with  a  sum  of 
ready  money,  took  these  lands  over  their  heads.  This 
is  a  fact  well  known  ;  the  Scullog  race,  that  great  nursery 
of  labourers  and  manufacturers,  has  been  broken  and  dis¬ 
persed  in  every  quarter,  and  we  have  nothing  in  lieu  but 
those  most  miserable  wretches  on  earth,  the  cottagers ; 
naked  slaves,  who  labour  without  food,  and  live  while 
they  can  without  house  or  covering,  under  the  lash  of 
merciless  and  relentless  masters.  The  Catholics,  as  we 
have  seen,  keep  their  farms  in  a  bad  plight,  as  they 
are  excluded  by  law  from  durable  and  profitable  tenures- 
and  they  derive  some  advantage  from  a  source,  which 
brings  infinite  mischief  to  the  nation.  Agriculture,  the 
mother  of  population,  the  nurse  of  every  useful  art,  the 
support  of  commerce,  is  exchanged  in  Ireland  for  pasturage, 
the  parent  of  inconsequence,  and  the  purveyor  of  national 
indigence,  an  occupation  (if  we  may  call  it  one)  which 
occasions  frequent  returns  of  famine,  drains  the  kingdom 
of  its  specie,  and  occasions  the  emigration  of  numbers, 
who,  for  want  of  employment  at  home,  are  yearly  on  the 
wing.”* 

Another  competent  authority,  Gordon,  thus  describes 
the  same  scenes,  causes,  and  effects.  Referring  to  the 
first  agrarian  outbreak  of  1762,  he  says  :  “  It  was  occa¬ 
sioned  by  the  expulsion  of  labouring  peasants  destitute 
of  any  regular  means  of  subsistence,  by  any  other  means 
of  industry,  while  those  who  remained  unexpelled,  or  pro¬ 
cured  small  spots  of  ground,  had  no  means  of  paying  the 

*  Observation  on  the  Affairs  of  Ireland,  from  the  Settlement  in 
1691  to  the  Present  Time. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  27 

exorbitant  rents,  even  by  labour — the. pay  of  which  was, 
by  the  smallness  of  the  demand,  beyond  all  due  propor¬ 
tion  low.  The  misery  of  these  cottagers  was  completed 
when  they  were,  by  enclosures,  deprived  of  commonage, 
which  to  many  had  been  at  first  allowed.  Numbers  of 
them  secretly  assembled  in  the  night  and  vented  their 
fury  on  objects  ignorantly  conceived  to  be  the  causes  of 
their  misery.”*4 

Thus,  during  a  period  of  over  seventy  years,  from  the 
Revolution  to  1760,  had  the  unfortunate  Irish  peasant 
submitted,  it  would  seem  without  murmur,  because  with¬ 
out  resource,  to  a  system  of  extermination  aggravated  by 
all  the  horrors  of  religious  rancour  and  penal  disabilities. 
This  system  at  length  gave  rise,  in  succession,  to  the 
White-boys ,  Levellers ,  Hearts  of  Steel ,  Eight-boys ,  with  the 
followers  of  Captain  Boclc,  Molly  Maguire,  &c.,  &c.,  all 
goaded  to  madness  by  the  absolutely  “  intolerable  oppres¬ 
sions”  to  wliich  they  were  systematically  subjected — as 
to-day. 

Speaking  of  the  rising  of  the  “  Levellers,”  above  re¬ 
ferred  to,  Dr.  Campbell  says,  “  I  hardly  know  whether 
this  insurrection  was  the  same  with  that  of  the  White-boys . 
In  their  cause,  however,  they  were  identified,  which  was 
the  intolerable  oppression  of  the  landed  proprietors.”! 

The  Hearts  of  Steel  turned  out  in  1763-4,  and  of  them  Mr. 
Wakefield  writes :  “The  hapless  peasants  being  thus  aban¬ 
doned,  gave  way  to  the  impulse  of  their  ungovernable  pas¬ 
sions,  and  vented  their  fury  on  those  whom  they  considered 
as  their  oppressors  ”  (almost  the  words  of  Gordon  above 
quoted).  He  pursues — “  These  commotions  afford  a 
striking  and  melancholy  proof  of  the  country  at  the  time 
they  took  place,  and,  as  they  arose  from  causes  uncon¬ 
nected  with  public  measures,  may  convince  those  who 

*  History  of  Ireland,  vol.  ii.  pp.  240-1. 
f  Philo.  Survey  of  Ireland,  p.  240. 


% 


28 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ascribe  every  evil  they  experience  to  the  Government, 
that  national  misfortunes  depend  more  on  the  conduct  of 
individuals  than  is  generally  believed  or  admitted.” 
A  very  just  reflection,  and  literally  illustrated,  in  the 
conduct  of  the  Irish  landlords  of  the  present  day,  who, 
whether  Fenianism  is  to  be  deemed  a  “  misfortune  ”  or 
not,  in  which  opinion  widely  diverges,  are,  beyond  all 
doubt,  the  best  “  Head  Centres  ”  to  be  had.  Yet  this 
sentiment  must  be  received  with  a  certain  qualification. 
For  when  Government  so  legislates,  as  not  merely  to 
tolerate  but  to  legalise  and  sanction  such  “  conduct  of 
individuals,”  it  becomes,  by  the  fact,  responsible  for  its 
consequences,  and,  if  possible,  more  culpable  than  the 
immediate  delinquents  themselves.  “  Who  are  respon¬ 
sible  V  asks  Mr.  Binn.  “The  Government  is  responsible.”* 

The  fell  spirit  that  wrought  the  above  effects,  the 
spirit  of  consolidation,  is  at  full  operation  this  day. 
Catholics,  indeed,  are  legally  qualified  to  hold  beneficial 
leases,  but  the  “  master  ”  is  equally  legally  entitled  to 
withhold  them,  and  so  a  leased  farm  or  holding  is  some¬ 
thing  as  rare  amongst  us  as  a  fossil  of  the  megalotherian 
kind.  In  1771  Catholics  were  qualified  to  hold  leases  of 
fifty  acres  of  unprofitable  bog ,  with  a  half  acre  of  arable 
land  adjoining;  a  couple  of  years  later,  in  1773,  the 
papist  was  permitted  to  emerge  from  the  bog,  and  hold 
under  lease  like  any  other  Christian ;  and  in  1782  he 
became  qualified  to  hold  land  in  fee.  From  that  period 
down  to  the  year  of  the  “  accursed  Union,”  no  other 
country  in  the  world  advanced  so  rapidly,  as  Lord  Clare 
assures  us,  in  agriculture,  manufactures,  and  commerce, 
as  Ireland.f  The  same  testimony  is  given  by  Mr.  (Lord) 
Plunket,  O’Connell  (Memoir  of  Ireland),  Earl  Grey,  Mr. 
Foster,  Mr.  Jebb  (second  Repeal  Essay,  pp.  13,  18.) 

From  that  forth  down  to  this  hour,  our  descent  down 


*  Practical  View. 


+  Pamphlet  in  1798. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


29 


the  decline  of  wretchedness  has  not  been  interrupted  for 
a  single  day.  Absentee,  rack-renting,  depopulating 
landlords,  making,  as  if  in  very  mockery,  laws  in  a  foreign 
parliament  for  their  miserable  serfs  at  home — wolves 
legislating  for  lambs — have  never  paused  in  their  fiendish 
work  until,  at  last,  the  “  Notice  to  quit,”  the  “  crowbar,” 
“consolidation,”  “emigration,”  “pauperism,”  have  become, 
like  wife  and  cliild-murder  in  England — “  national  insti¬ 
tutions.” 

But  to  revert — 

“  Slaves,”  “  naked  slaves,”  as  they  were,  the  iron  hav¬ 
ing  entered  their  inmost  soul,  the  Irish  peasant  and 
labourer  long  submitted  to  the  territorial  as  to  the  reli¬ 
gious  oppression  which  bowed  them  to  the  earth.  At 
length  the  worm  began  to  turn,  in  a  fashion,  on  its 
trampler.  But  not  as  yet,  in  the  modern  fashion  of 
repaying  eviction  with  the  blunderbuss.  In  1762,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  “  White-boys  ”  first  appeared ;  and  their 
first  exploit  was  one  of  a  ludicrous  though  significant 
character.  In  the  January  of  that  year  they  turned  out, 
and  in  one  night  dug  up  twelve  acres  of  rich  fattening 
ground  belonging  to  Mr.  Maxwell,  near  Kilfinnan. 
“  Various  causes,”  says  Plowden,  “  concurred  in  reducing 
these  forlorn  peasantry  to  the  most  abject  misery.  An 
epidemic  disorder  of  the  horned  cattle  had  spread  from 
Holstein  through  Holland  into  England,  where  it  raged 
for  some  years ;  and  in  consequence  raised  the  price  of 
beef,  cheese,  and  butter  to  exorbitancy.  Hence  pasturage 
became  more  profitable  than  tillage,  and  the  whole  agri¬ 
culture  of  the  south  of  Ireland,  which  had  for  some  time 
past  flourished  under  a  mild  administration  of  the  popery 
laws,  instantly  ceased ;  and  numerous  families  who  were 
fed  by  the  labour  of  agriculture,  were  turned  adrift  with¬ 
out  means  of  subsistence.  Cottiers  being  tenants-at-will, 
were  everywhere  dispossessed  of  their  scanty  holdings, 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


30 

and  large  tracts  of  land  were  let  to  wealthy  monopolisei  s 
who,  by  feeding  cattle,  required  fewer  hands  and  paid 
higher  rents.  Pressed  by  need,  most  of  those  unfortu¬ 
nate  peasantry  sought  shelter  in  the  neighbouring  towns, 
to  beg  that  bread  which  they  could  no  longer  earn ;  and 
the  only  piteous  resource  of  the  affluent  was  to  ship  off  as 
many  as  would  emigrate  to  seek  maintenance  or  death  in 
foreign  climes.”*  It  was  about  the  same  time  that  the 
penal  statute  was  enacted  excluding  Catholics  from  towns 
and  trades ;  thus  were  they,  literally,  deprived  of  the 
smallest  locus  standi  in  the  land  that  bore  them.  Hence 
Dr.  Campbell  informs  us,  that  “the  greater  and  the  best 
part  of  the  land  was  verging  to  depopulation,  and  that 
the  inhabitants  were  either  moping  under  the  sullen 
gloom  of  inactive  indigence  or  blindly  asserting  the  rights 
of  nature  in  nocturnal  insurrections,  attended  with  circum¬ 
stances  of  ruinous  devastation  and  savage  cruelty,”  all 
which  he  ascribes  to  “political  errors  somewhere” — (the 
English  Barrister  says  “  with  Government.”)  “  There  is 
no  necessity,”  continues  he,  “  for  recurring  to  natural 
disposition  when  the  political  constitution  obtrudes  upon 
us  so  many  obvious  and  sufficient  causes  of  the  sad  effects 
we  complain  of.  The  first  of  these  is  the  suffering  avarice 
to  convert  the  arable  land  into  pasture.”! 

The  author  of  two  admirable  little  tracts,  entitled 
“  Outline  of  a  Scheme  for  Universal  Toleration,”  and  “  A 
Plea  for  Toleration,”  published  in  1778,  after  describing 
in  language  similar  to  that  of  Swift,  Boulter,  &c.,  &e., 
the  squalid  wretchedness  of  the  masses  of  the  people, 
accounts  for  it  as  follows — 

“  The  papists,”  said  he,  “  were  put  under  a  legal  inter¬ 
dict  from  enjoying  any  lands  whatsoever  (for  it  extends 
immediately  to  plots  and  houses  in  corporate  towns)  save 

*  Hist.  Rev.  of  the  State  of  Ireland,  vol.  i.  part  I.  p.  336. 

f  Philos.  Surv.  p.  240.  Ibid.  p.  304.  Sadler,  p.  100. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


31 


only  under  a  short  tenure ;  even  that  is  made  liable  to  a 
forfeiture  in  favour  of  the  first  Protestant  informer,  should 
it  exceed  a  certain  profit,  prescribed  by  statute.  The 
operation  of  this  interdict  in  making  spies  extremely 
vigilant  brought  many  suits  into  our  law  courts,  and  re¬ 
duced  many  families  to  distress  and  sorrow.”  Hence, 
“  It  has  put  a  stop  altogether  to  agriculture,  and  converted 
our  popish  landholders  into  a  huge  tribe  of  graziers  like 
our  Scythian  ancestors  (the  words  of  Swift).  Pasturage 
is  one  defence  with  them  against  informers,  and  is  their 
sole  occupation ;  for  industry  we  cannot  call  it.  Careful 
however  of  the  true  interests  of  men  reduced  to  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  leading  such  a  life,  they  avoid  improving,  building 
or  enclosing,  as  well  to  draw  as  much  as  possible  from 
an  expiring  tenure ,  as  to  prevent  a  temptation  in  Pro¬ 
testants  to  take  a  lease  in  reversion  of  the  wastes  they 
throw  about  themselves.  .  .  .  Through  this  pastoral  occu¬ 
pation  population  meets  great  impediments,  and  one  year 
of  famine  demolishes  almost  all  that  nature  could  produce 
in  many.  ...  To  restore  agriculture  we  should  return  to 
King  William’s  principles  and  practice  by  encouragements 

to  labour  and  security  to  the  labourer . A  good 

agrarian  law  will  execute  itself ;  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  any  other  discouraging  to  the  tiller  can  be  effec¬ 
tual.  Let  this  capital  truth  be  for  once  admitted;  let  it 
be  granted  also  that  agriculture,,  or  in  other  words  the 
business  of  planting,  building,  and  enclosing,  as  well  as 
of  tilling,  should  be  that  of  men  secure  from  all  danger  in 
conducting  it ;  not  of  men  exposed  to  great  danger  in 
attempting  it,”  and  he  winds  up  by  calling  the  system 
that  prevailed,  “a  conspiracy  against  the  prosperity  of 
Ireland.”  And  does  not  the  same  system  and  worse  pre¬ 
vail  to-day  ?  What  “  security  ”  has  the  tenant-at-will  1 
His  “  tenure  ”  expires  every  six  months.  If  he  improve 
his  farm  his  rent  is  raised,  or  perhaps,  even,  he  is  entirely 


32 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


evicted,  and  the  brother  or  nephew  or  friend  or  briber 
of  the  bailiff  or  the  “  clerk  in  the  office  ”  is  installed  in 
his  stead. 

In  the  property  of  the  Earl  of  Lucan  a  bailiff  and  a 
clerk  in  the  office  occupy  whole  townlands,  out  of  which 
the  aboriginal  tenants  were  mercilessly  evicted. 

This  inhuman  system  of  depopulation  has  continued, 
with  more  or  less  extension  and  intensity,  from  1700. or 
so — strictly  1690 — up  to  this  very  day.  One  hundred 
and  eighty  years  of  landlord  depopulation,  varied  with  a 
penal  code,  which  Burke  has  immortally  described  as  “an 
engine  of  elaborate  wickedness  the  best  fitted  to  degrade 
human  nature  that  was  issued  from  the  perverted  inge¬ 
nuity  of  man.”  Yet  we  live,  and  our  motto  is  “  Excel- 

•  V 

sior. 

In  1735  the  exemption  of  pasture  lands  from  tithes 
was  made  to  cease;  but  yet,  up  to  1842,  its  protection 
by  the  prohibition  of  foreign  beef,  was  nearly  as  mis¬ 
chievous  in  its  effects.  One  as  well  as  the  other  was  a 
bounty  on  quadrupeds  as  opposed  to  human  beings.  Two 
years  after  the  attainment  of  legislative  independence  in 
1784  the  cards  were  reversed,  and  the  importation  of 
foreign  grain  was  prohibited — a  premium  thus  fixed  on 
the  production  of  the  native  material.  The  “  ever 
accursed  Union  ”  came,  and  in  its  train  in  1815,  another 
mania  for  “  flocks  and  herds.”  Next  year  the  Irish  land¬ 
lords,  in  a  foreign  parliament,  obtained  their  Quarter 
Sessions  Act  of  cheap  and  expeditious  extermination. 

That  calamity  called  “  Emancipation  ”  only  aggravated 
the  evil  by  the  fatal  concession  of  the  disfranchisement  of 
the  forty-shilling  freeholders.  From  that  downwards  the 
history  of  our  country  may  be  written  in  the  words  eviction, 
emigration,  conspiracy,  insurrection,  workhouse,  agrarian 
revenge.  Of  the  latter,  the  two  latest  cases  are  those  of 
Captain  Lambert,  Co.  Galway,  and  Mr.  Warburton,  High 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


33 

Sheriff  of  Queen’s  County,  both  fired  at  and  desperately 
wounded  in  broad  daylight,  in  consequence,  it  is  sup¬ 
posed,  of  their  exercise  of  those  unlimited  powers  of 
eviction  conferred  on  them  by  a  parliament  of  landlords.* 

Beviewing  this  dismal,  black  history  of  Ireland  up  to 
his  own  day,  Mr.  Binn  makes  the  following  reflections, 
replying  to  the  flippant  objection  to  State  interference  in 
the  landed  relations  of  Ireland,  that  they  “  would  remedy 
themselves,”  he  says — 

No. 

“Itusticus  expectat  dum  defluat  amnis  at  ille,” 

“Labitur  atque  labetur  in  omne  volubilis  album.” 

A  better  state  of  things  in  Ireland  will  never  grow, 
will  never  come  of  itself.  A  better  state  of  things  may 
be  made,  may  be  created  there,  might  be  created  imme¬ 
diately  and  permanently,  will  be  created  when  the  let- 
alone  policy  is  finally  abandoned  in  despair,  and  the 
hollowness  of  existing  notions  of  political  economy  is 
demonstrated  by  experience,  and  generally  recognized. 

According  to  received  theories,  Ireland  ought  to  be  very 
prosperous.  She  is  a  very  large  and  an  eminently  fer¬ 
tile  island,  in  a  temperate  latitude.  She  has  safe  and 
capacious  harbours,  noble  rivers,  immense  water-power ; 
she  possesses  great  mineral  wealth  of  every  description. 
In  spite  of  calumnious  assertions  to  the  contrary,  her 
poor,  when  employed  and  fed,  are  the  most  laborious  of 
mankind.  Our  wise  men  assure  us  that  it  is  a  vulgar 
error  to  suppose  that  absenteeism  has  been  injurious. 
Above  all,  Ireland  has  had  perfectly  free  trade  for  many 
years,  with  the  richest  nation  on  earth,  and  the  let-alone 
system  has  had  free  course. 

"What  is  her  condition  1  No  description  can  describe 
it ;  no  parallel  exists,  or  ever  lias  existed,  to  illustrate 

*  See  Appendix. 

C 


34 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


it.  No  province  of  the  Boman  empire  ever  presented 
half  the  wretchedness  of  Ireland.  At  this  day  the  muti¬ 
lated  Fellah  of  Egypt,  the  savage  Hottentot  and  New 
Hollander,  the  Negro  Slave,  the  live  chattel  of  Carolina 
or  Cuba,  enjoy  a  paradise  in  comparison  with  the  con¬ 
dition  of  the  Irish  peasant,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  bulk  of 
the  Irish  nation. 

Who  is  responsible  ?  Common  sense  says,  and  all 
Europe  and  America  repeat  it,  those  who  have  governed 
Ireland  are  responsible.  Yet  it  would  be  unjust  to  charge 
Great  Britain  with  a  want  of  kindly  feeling  or  generosity 
to  Ireland.  The  truth  is,  that  partly  from  the  pressure 
of  other  business,  but  partly  and  chiefly  from  the  influence 
of  empty  and  pernicious  theories,  Ireland,  except  in  the 
imperfect  way  in  which  the  peace  has  been  kept,  has 
not  been  governed  at  all  on  principle  ;  every  social  and 
economical  abuse  has  been  allowed  to  run  riot. 

Proprietors  have  on  principle  been  allowed  to  lock  up 
their  lands  with  charges  constituting  a  mortmain  ;  worse 
than  the  mortmain  of  the  middle  ages — preventing,  not 
only  alienation,  but  cultivation.  To  interfere  with  con¬ 
tracts  between  landlord  and  tenant,  so  as  to  give  the 
tenant  (what  the  public  welfare  requires  he  should  have) 
an  interest  in  the  improvement  of  the  land,  has  been,  and 
is  denounced  as  contrary  to  the  principle  !  To  interfere 
with  the  mode  of  cultivation  shocked  the  political  econo¬ 
mists.  To  jput  a  stop  to  those  clearances,  which  inflict  more 
misery  than  an  invasion,  was  to  interfere  with  the  rights  of 
property.  To  attempt  a  provision  for  the  helpless  poor, 
was  to  add  to  Ireland’s  existing  wretchedness,  the  abuses 
of  the  English  Poor  Law.  To  encourage,  artificially,  any 
Irish  industry,  and  so  to  compensate,  in  some  degree,  for 
the  artificial  and  direct  discouragements  to  lohich  it  had  been 
subject  for  so  many  years,  till  it  was  effectually  overlaid  and 
smothered  by  the  manufacturing  industry  of  England 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


35 


would  still  be  deemed  monstrously  absurd.  But  the  in¬ 
justice  of  inflicting  intolerable  burthens  on  the  owners 
and  occupiers  of  Irish  land,  and  then  exposing  them  to 
competition  with  those  who  are  subject  to  no  such  bur¬ 
thens,  is  not  perceived.* 

These  are  the  reflections  of  an  honest  and  philosophical 
mind.  “No,  the  evils  of  Ireland  will  not  remedy  them¬ 
selves.”  By  one  or  other  of  two  means — legislation  or 
revolution — the  remedy  must  be  effected.  With  those  at 
the  helm  of  State  stands  the  choice,  the  choice  to  elevate 
the  worse  than  “  Fellah,”  and  the  Hottentot  in  social 
position  into  a  free  and  independent  man,  or  to  leave 
him  still  plotting  the  last  resource  to  elevate  himself. 
“  These  clearances  which  inflict  more  misery  than  an  in¬ 
vasion, ”  must  be  “  put  a  stop  to  ”  in  the  end.  The  Irish 
tenant  must  cease  to  be  “  tenant-at-will  ” — “  the  live 
chattel  ”  of  his  merciless  “  master.”  Will  those  holding 
the  reins  of  power  have  courage  to  meet  the  arrogant 
claims  of  exploded  feudalism  right  in  the  face— to  say  to 
the  feudal  despot,  “  Too  long  have  you  possessed,  too  long 
have  you  exercised  a  most  unrighteous  though  a  legal 
right.  The  time  has  come  for  its  final  discontinuance. 
Your  tenant  must  be  no  longer  your  slave.  As  you  have 
a  right  to  the  rents  of  your  estate,  so  has  he  to  the  pro¬ 
duce  of  his  industry.  As  the  sovereign  cannot  disturb 
you  in  possession,  so  must  not  you  the  tenant  while  he 
pays  that  rent  which  an  equitable  and  renewable  valua¬ 
tion  will  proscribe.”  The  day  must  never  dawn  when 
you  may  “  evict  at  will.” 

Having  thus  far  given  a  vivid  outline  of  the  Irish  land 
question,  especially  within  the  last  two  centuries  or  so? 
we  now  come  to  view  its  several  features  in  brief  detail. 
Land-tenure,  rack-rents,  evictions,  consolidation,  and 


*  Evils  of  Ireland :  London,  Teeleys.  1850. 


36 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


grazing,  “  agrarian  outrages,”  as  they  are  called,  and 
absenteeism,  shall,  each  in  turn,  receive  its  due  share  of 
notice.  True,  these  are  all  so  intertwined  one  with  another 
or  all,  that  a  perfectly  exclusive  consideration  of  any  one, 
apart  from  some  or  all  of  the  others,  were  simply  im¬ 
possible.  Still,  for  the  sake  of  order  it  is  best  to  con¬ 
sider  each  in  its  own  place. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


37 


CHAPTER  II. 


TENURE  OF  LAND. 


“The  land  of  Ireland,  the  land  of  every  country,  belongs  to  the  people  of  that 
country.”— Mill's  “  Polit.  Econ b.  ii.  c.  x.  p.  200.  Ed.  1868. 


The  question  of  Tenure  is  of  all  others,  beyond  all  com¬ 
parison,  the  most  important  as  connected  with  the  land 
system  of  Ireland.  No  doubt,  it  forms  only  part  of  a 
great  whole,  but  still  a  part  the  most  vital,  the  very  seat, 
“  the  root  and  fountain  ”  of  misery  or  happiness,  order 
or  outrage,  life  or  death,  among  the  tenantry  of  Ireland. 

Lord  Clarendon,  in  a  speech  of  his  at  the  West  Herts 
Agricultural  Society,  on  the  26th  of  September,  calls  the 
eviction  of  a  tenant-at-will  without  compensation  an  act 
of  felony — “  a  felonious  act” — designating  the  question  of 
tenure  of  land  in  Ireland  as  “  a  momentous  and  vital,  but 
not  a  party  question.”  The  following  are  his  words  : — 

“  They  were  practical  men  whom  he  was  addressing, 
and  he  would  ask  any  gentlemen  present,  if  he  were  to 
take  a  farm  at  will  upon  which  the  landed  proprietor 
never  did  and  never  intended  to  do  anything,  and  were 
to  build  upon  the  farm  a  house  and  homestead,  and 
effectually  drain  the  land,  and  then  be  turned  out  on  a 
six  months’  notice  by  his  landlord,  would  any  language 
be  strong  enough,  not  forgetting  the  language  made  use 
of  at  the  public  meetings,  and  in  the  press  recently  in 
this  country,  to  condemn  such  a  felonious  act  as  that 
(hear,  hear).  Far  be  it  from  him  to  say  any  such  pro¬ 
ceedings  were  resorted  to  on  large  and  well  managed 
estates  in  Ireland,  of  which  he  could  give  a  long  list,  but 


38 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  power  did  exist  of  turning  out  a  tenant  under  such 
circumstances.  It  was  too  often  exercised,  and  it  ought 
to  he  abated ;  because  as  long  as  it  existed,  there  could 
be  no  confidence  between  landlord  and  tenant  (hear, 
hear).” 

He  then  complains,  that  while  in  England  there  is 
only  one  policeman  to  every  890  souls,  in  Ireland  there 
is  one  to  every  430,  and  this  at  a  cost  of  £900,000  a-year. 

Those  who  would  wish  to  study  the  different  kinds 
of  tenure  that  have  latterly  obtained  in  Europe,  I 
would  refer  for  a  full  description  and  analysis  to  Mr. 
Mill’s  invaluable  work,  quoted  above.  He  treats  suc¬ 
cessively  the  tenure  of  the  peasant  proprietor,  the  cottier, 
and  the  Metayer;  giving  a  decided  preference  to  the 
first.  We  all  know  what  “  Peasant  Proprietor  ”  means ; 
and  we  despair  not  yet  of  seeing  it  near  home  with  our 
own  eyes;  and  not  having  to  cross  the  channel  and 
witness  its  stupendous  effects  in  every  corner  of  Europe 
— from  Norway  to  Naples.  Parts  of  Spain  alone  have  no 
“  Peasant  Proprietors,”  and  next  to  Ireland,  these,  as  we 
shall  see,  are  the  most  miserable  in  the  globe.  The 
Metayer  system  which  prevailed  in  Prance  previous  to 
the  Eevolution,  and  still  obtains  in  portions  of  Italy  and 
Austria,  Mill  thus  describes  : 

“The  principle  of  the  Metayer  system  is,  that  the 
labourer,  or  peasant,  makes  his  engagement  directly  with 
the  landowner,  and  pays  not  a  fixed  rent,  either  in  money 
or  in  kind,  but  a  certain  proportion  of  the  produce,  or 
rather  of  what  remains  of  the  produce,  after  deducting 
what  is  considered  necessary  to  keep  up.  the  stock.”* 
This  proportion  varies  from  a  third  to  two-thirds  of  the 
surplus.  As  such  a  system  never  was,  and  never  will 
be  in  force  in  Ireland,  we  may  pass  it  over  without  a 
word  more. 


*  Princip.  Pol.  Econ.,  c.  viii. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


39 


The  cottier,  or  rack-renting  tenant-at-will  system,  so 
painfully  familiar  to  all  Irishmen,  he  describes  as  follows  : 

“  By  the  general  appellation  of  cottier  tenure,  I  shall 
designate  all  cases,  without  exception,  in  which  the 
labourer  makes  his  contract  for  land  without  the  inter¬ 
vention  of  the  capitalist  farmer,  and  in  which  the  con¬ 
ditions  of  the  contract,  especially  the  amount  of  rent,  are 
determined,  not  by  custom  but  by  competition.  The 
principal  European  example  of  this  tenure  is  Ireland, 
and  it  is  from  that  country  that  the  term  cottier  is 
derived.”  And  speaking  of  the  devouring  “  uncertain¬ 
ties”  of  such  a  system,  he  says — 

“  The  only  safeguard  against  these  uncertainties 
would  be  the  growth  of  a  custom  insuring  a  permanence 
of  tenure  in  the  same  occupant  without  liability  to  any 
other  increase  of  rent  than  might  happen  to  be  sanctioned 
by  the  general  sentiments  of  the  community.  The 
Ulster  tenant-right  is  such  a  custom.* 

Indeed,  it  would  be  impossible  to  put  the  case  of 
tenure  in  a  clearer  point  of  view  than  it  has  been 
presented  by  Mr.  Isaac  Butt — a  very  veteran,  though 
yet  a  young  man,  in  the  tenant  cause.  See  his  “  Fixity 
of  Tenure.”  Yet  on  a  question  of  such  paramount 
importance  it  may  not  be  forbidden  to  anyone  to  throw, 
if  he  can,  some  additional  gleam  of  light.  Original  thought 
or  views  on  the  point  are  simply  out  of  the  question. 
Common  sense,  mere  rational  instinct,  so  emphatically 
dictate  that  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  in  any  country, 
but,  above  all,  in  a  country  almost  purely  agricultural 
like  Ireland — robbed  as  she  has  been  by  positive  royal 
proclamation  and  statute  of  law  of  nearly  all  her  other 
industries,  trade,  commerce,  manufactures — should  be 
hedged  in  by  every  possible  species  of  protection  against 
the  exercise  of  arbitrary  power.  Yet  what  do  we  find  ? 


*  Princip.  Pol.  Econ.,  193-4. 


40 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


W  liy,  that  in  Ireland  the  unhappy  cultivator  that  sows 
to-day,  knows  not  but  another  may  reap  this  day  six 
months. 

“  Sic  vos  non  vobis  nideficatis  aves 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  mellificates  apes, 

Sic  vos  non  vobis  arificatis  boves, 

Sic  vos  non  vobis  velliticatis  oves.  ” 

The  mother  of  the  present  writer  was  left  a  widow  four 
or  five  years  ago.  It  pleased  the  Almighty  to  call  from 
her,  I  hope  to  Himself,  her  husband,  son  and  daughter, 
within  the  space  of  six  months.  She  was  thus  left  to 
herself,  without  other  society  than  that  of  her  servants. 
In  such  bereavement  she  took  in  her  son-in-law  and 
daughter — a  respectable,  comfortable  family,  renting  a 
farm  on  an  adjoining  estate.  And  for  this,  as  contrary  to 
“  the  rules  of  estate,”  she  was  mercilessly  evicted  ! !  her 
house  torn  down,  her  growing  crops  seized,  though  every 
farthing  of  her  rent  had  been  paid.  The  old  lady  (70 
years  of  age)  is  now  living  with  her  son  the  writer ;  had 
she  no  resource,  the  workhouse  or  death  alone  remained 
as  her  doom. 

And  this  is  only  a  sample — indeed  a  comparatively 
‘mild  instance,  of  the  hardships  and  cruelties  wrought  by 
the  abominable  system  of  tenancy  at  will.  To  that  fell 
system  is  attributable  all  the  desolating  evictions  and 
other  miseries,  already  outlined,  that  form  the  staple  ot 
our  country’s  sad  history  these  two  hundred  years.  And 
why  should  this  be  so  'i  Why  should  one  man  be  inde¬ 
pendent  both  of  monarch  and  law,  while  thousands  under 
him  subsist  at  the  beck  of  his  will  1 

Did  the  “  Omnipotent  ”  in  creating  this  earth  destine 
it  only  for  a  favoured  few  to  the  prejudice  and  misery  of 
the  many  1  Or  when  the  Holy  Ghost  declared  that  He 
“gave  the  earth  to  the  children  of  men,”  did  He  mean. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


41 


to  exclude  from  the  benefit  of  the  gift  this  fair  island, 
and  destine  it  only  for  a  cruel  few  1  Or,  otherwise,  did 
He  mean  to  exclude  the  masses  of  the  Irish  race,  the 
most  intelligent  on  the  face  of  the  globe,  from  the  cate¬ 
gory  of  “  the  sons  of  men  T  ) 

The  Irish  landlord  idea  of  the  “  rights  of  property”  is 
something  utterly  astounding.  It  is  simply  this — that,  not 
by  virtue  of  mere  positive  human  law  or  usage,  but  as  of 
inherent  and  immutable  right,  he  “  can  do  what  he  likes” 
with  the  land  of  which  he  is  the  “  owner  ”  by  law.  He 
can  “  clear  ”  it  of  every  human  soul.  He  can  turn  it  into 
a  wide  waste.  He  can  let  the  billows  of  the  ocean  roll 
over  its  surface,  or  hedge  it  in  with  a  wall  of  brass.  Is 
it  not  “  his  own  1”  And  who,  therefore,  has  any  right 
to  interfere  between  it  and  him,  and  control  him  in  its 
management  1  This  is  the  landlord  idea  of  his  proprie¬ 
torial  rights  in  Ireland.  He  never  permits  the  notion 
of  any  “  right  ”  whatsoever,  on  the  part  of  the  multitude, 
of  the  people  born  on  the  soil,  whose  fathers  tilled  the 
soil,  and  developed  its  latent  fertility,  to  enter  his  soul. 
For  them  that  great  all-just  God,  who  is  no  “ acceptor  of 
persons,”  is  supposed  by  the  landlord  to  have  no  regard 
at  all.  He  alone,  be  he  the  scion  of  a  great  ancestral 
house,  or  the  “brutal  upstart  of  yesterday,”  weighs, 
in  the  estimation  of  the  Most  High,  whole  baronies  of 
creatures  equally  human  with  himself,  all  of  whom  may 
be  his  equals,  many  his  superiors  in  the  possession  of  all 
these  human  attributes  which,  even  more  than  the  human 
shape,  essentially  distinguish  the  man  from  the  beast.  In 
vice  and  villany  alone  he  often  bears  away  the  palm. 
Yet  such  a  creature  monstrouslv  claims  whole  regions  of 

V  o 

land  as  specially  created  for  himself,  to  the  exclusion  of 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  better  men. 

This  pernicious  delusion  must  be  at  once  eliminated 
from  the  territorial  mind.  The  landlord  must  be  sent  to 


42 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


school  again  to  unlearn  a  destructive  lesson  taught  him 
by  the  traditions  of  ascendant  power,  and  brute  force  and 
oppression,  and  to  imbibe  a  maxim  almost  self-evident — 

that  God  created  the  land  not  for  the  few  but  for  the 

/ 

many ;  and  that,  therefore,  any  human  laws,  such  as  the 
monstrous  land-code  of  Ireland,  giving  the  few  an  absolute, 
irresponsible  property  in  the  land,  to  the  prejudice  of 
the  many,  is  an  infringement  of  the  Law  and  Intent 
Divine,  and  ought  therefore  to  be  irrevocably  abrogated. 
“  The  land  of  Ireland,”  writes  Mr.  Mill,  “  the  land  of  any 
country,  belongs  to  the  people  of  that  country.  The 
individuals  called  landowners  have  no  right,  in  morality 
and  justice,  to  anything  but  the  rent  or  compensation  for 
its  seasonable  value.  ...  It  is  the  duty  of  Parliament  to 
reform  the  landed  tenure  in  Ireland.  There  is  no  neces¬ 
sity  for  depriving  the  landlord  of  one  farthing  of  the 
pecuniary  value  of  their  legal  rights  ;  but  justice  requires 
that  the  actual  cultivators  should  be  enabled  to  become 
in  Ireland  what  they  -will  become  in  America — proprietors 
of  the  soil  which  they  cultivate.* 

And  again,  he  lays  down  the  fundamental  maxim,  that 
property  in  land  is  essentially  different  from  all  other 
kinds  of  property,  which  are  the  result  and  reward  of 
industry,  economy,  and  skill.  It  is  on  the  same  basis  he 
grounds  the  claim  for  perpetuity  of  tenure  on  the  part  of 
the  industrious  cultivator  of  the  soil. 

“  The  essential  principal  of  property,”  says  he,  “  being 
to  assure  to  all  persons  what  they  have  produced  by 
their  labour  and  accumulated  by  their  abstinence,  this 
principal  cannot  apply  to  what  is  not  the  produce  of 
labour,  the  raw  material  of  the  earth.  If  the  land  derived 
its  productive  power  wholly  from  nature  and  not  at  all 
from  industry,  or  if  there  were  any  means  of  discriminat¬ 
ing  what  is  derived  from  each  source,  it  not  only  would 


*  Mill  on  Polit.  Econ.  c.  x. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


43 


not  be  necessary,  but  it  would  be  the  height  of  injustice, 
to  let  the  gift  of  nature  be  engrossed  by  individuals.  .  .  . 
A  holder  will  not  incur  this  outlay  when  a  stranger, 
and  not  himself,  will  be  benefited  by  it.  If  he  under¬ 
takes  such  improvements  he  must  have  a  sufficient  period 
before  him  in  which  to  profit  by  them,  and  he  is  no  way 
so  sure  of  having  a  sufficient  period  as  when  his  tenure  is 
perpetual. 

“  These  are  the  reasons  (industry  and  improvements) 
which  form  the  justification,  in  an  economical  point  of 
view,  of  property  in  land.  It  is  seen  that  they  are  only 
valid  in  so  far  as  the  'proprietor  of  land  is  its  improver. 
Whenever  in  any  country  the  proprietor  ceases  to  be  an 
improver,  political  economy  has  nothing  to  say  in  defence 
of  landed  property  as  there  established.  In  no  sound 
theory  of  private  property  was  it  ever  contemplated  that 
the  proprietor  of  land  should  be  merely  a  sinecurist  quar¬ 
tered  on  it.”  And  speaking  even  of  England  itself,  he 
says — “Even  in  granting  leases,  it  is  in  England  a  general 
complaint,  that  they  tie  up  their  tenants  by  covenants 
grounded  on  the  practices  of  an  obsolete  and  exploded 
agriculture  :  whilst  most  of  them,  by  withholding  leases 
altogether,  and  giving  the  farmer  no  guarantee  of  pos¬ 
session  beyond  a  single  harvest,  keep  the  land  on  a  foot¬ 
ing  little  more  favourable  to  improvement  than  in  the 
time  of  our  barbarous  ancestors  : — 

- ‘  Immetata  quibus  jugera  liberas 

Fruges  et  cecerum  ferunt 

Nec  cultura  placet  longior  anno.’ 

Landed  property  in  England  is  thus  far  from  completely 
fulfilling  the  conditions  which  render  its  existence 
economically  justifiable.  But,  if  insufficiently  realized 
even  in  England,  in  Ireland  those  conditions  are  not 
complied  with  at  all.  With  individual  exceptions  (some 
of  them  very  honourable  ones)  the  owners  of  Irish  estates 


44 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


do  nothing  but  drain  it  of  its  produce.  What  has  been 
epigrammatically  said  in  the  discussion  on  ‘  peculiar 
burthens’  is  literally  true  when  applied  to  them  :  that 
the  greatest  ‘  burthen  on  land’  is  the  landlords.  Be- 
turning  nothing  to  the  soil,  they  consume  its  whole  pro¬ 
duce,  minus  the  potatoes,  strictly  necessary  to  keep  the 
inhabitants  from  dying  of  famine  :  and  when  they  have 
any  purpose  of  improvement  the  preparatory  step  usually 
consists  in  not  leaving  even  this  pittance,  but  turning 
out  the  people  to  beggary,  if  not  to  starvation.  When 
landed  property  has  placed  itself  on  this  footing  it  ceases 
to  be  defensible,  and  the  time  has  come  for  making  some 
new  arrangement  of  the  matter.  When  the  ‘  sacredness 
of  property’  is  talked  of,  it  should  always  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  any  such  sacredness  does  not  belong  in  the 
same  degree  to  landed  property.  No  MAN  made  the 
Land.  It  is  the  original  inheritance  of  the  whole  species. 
Its  appropriation  is  a  question  of  general  expediency. 
When  private  property  in  land  is  not  expedient  it  is 
unjust.  It  is  no  hardship  to  any  man  to  be  excluded 
from  what  others  have  produced :  they  were  not  bound 
to  produce  it  for  his  use ;  and  he  loses  nothing  by  not 
sharing  in  what  otherwise  would  not  have  existed  at  all. 
But  it  is  some  hardship  to  be  born  into  the  world  and  to* 
find  all  nature’s  gifts  previously  engrossed  and  no  place 
left  for  the  new  comer.  To  reconcile  people  to  this,  after 
they  have  once  admitted  into  their  minds  the  idea  that 
any  moral  rights  belong  to  them  as  human  beings,  it  will 
always  be  necessary  to  convince  them  that  the  exclusive 
appropriation  is  good  for  mankind  on  the- whole,  them¬ 
selves  included.  But  this  is  what  no  sane  human  being 
could  be  persuaded  of,  if  the  relation  between  the  land- 
owner  and  the  cultivator  were  the  same  everywhere  as 
it  has  been  in  Ireland.” 

•  Nowhere  in  the  globe  has  it  been  or  is  it  the  same. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


45 


“  Landed  property,”  he  adds,  “  is  felt,  even  by  those 
most  tenacious  of  its  rights,  to  be  a  different  thing  from 
other  property  *  and  where  the  bulk  of  the  community 
have  been  disinherited  of  their  share  of  it,  and  it  has 
become  the  exclusive  attribute  of  a  small  minority,  men 
have  generally  tried  to  reconcile  it,  at  least  in  theory,  to 
their  sense  of  justice,  by  endeavouring  to  attach  duties  to 
it,  and  erecting  it  into  a  kind  of  magistracy,  moral  and 
legal.  .  .  .  But  if  the  State  is  at  liberty  to  treat  the  pos¬ 
sessors  of  land  as  public  functionaries,  it  is  also  at  liberty 
to  discard  them.  The  claim  of  the  landlord  to  the  land 
is  altogether  subordinate  to  the  general  policy  of  the 
State.  The  principle  of  property  gives  them  no  right  to 
the  land,  but  only  a  right  to  compensation  for  whatever 
portion  of  their  interest  in  the  land  it  may  be  the  policy 
of  the  State  to  deprive  them  of.  ...  To  me  it  seems 
almost  an  axiom  that  property  in  land  should  be  inter¬ 
preted  strictly,  and  that  the  balance  in  all  cases  of  doubt 
should  incline  against  the  proprietor.  .  .  .  The  species 
at  large  still  retains,  of  its  original  claim  to  the  soil,  as 
much  as  is  compatible  with  the  purposes  for  which  it 
parted  with  the  remainder.” 

So  far  Mill  himself ;  and  in  a  note  he  quotes  Sismondi 
as  follows  : — “  What  endowed  man  with  intelligence  and 
perseverance  in  labour — what  made  him  direct  all  his 
efforts  towards  an  end  useful  to  his  race — was  the  senti¬ 
ment  of  perpetuity.  The  lands  which  the  streams  have 
deposited  along  their  course  are  always  the  most  fertile, 
but  are  also  those  which  they  mepace  with  their  inunda¬ 
tions  or  corrupt  by  marshes.  Under  the  guarantee  of 
perpetuity  man  undertook  long  and  painful  labours  to 
give  the  marshes  an  outlet:  Under  the  same  guarantee , 
man,  no  longer  contenting  himself  with  the  annual  pro¬ 
ducts  of  the  earth,  distinguished,  among  the  wild  vegeta¬ 
tion,  the  perennial  plants,  shrubs,  and  trees,  which  would 


46 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


be  useful  to  him,  improved  them  by  culture,  changed,  it 
may  almost  be  said,  their  very  nature,  and  multiplied 
their  amount.”*  Remove  that  guarantee,  and  the 
stimulus  to  industry  disappears,  and  nature  is  left  to 
herself,  and  man  to  misery  and  ultimate  decay. 

Until  we  succeed,  as  we  hope  to  do  within  a  few 
months,  in  schooling  the  Irish  landowner  into  the  admis¬ 
sion  of  the  above  fundamental  and  self-evident  truths,  we 
must  be  content  to  hear  the  changes  rung  by  him,  of  “Rob¬ 
bery,”  “Confiscation,”  “Revolutionary,”  “Socialistic,” 
“Revolutionary,”  “Confiscation,”  “Robbery.” 

We  bear  the  epithets. 

But  a  great  deal  is  said  about  the  “  difficulties  that 
surround  the  subject”  of  land  tenure  in  Ireland ;  and 
therefore  I  reply,  the  sooner  these  difficulties  are  sur¬ 
mounted  the  better.  They  are  only  aggravated  and 
multiplied  by  delay ;  or  is  that  to  say,  that  because  a 
disease  is  dangerous,  or  an  operation  difficult,  therefore 
the  patient  is  to  be  abandoned — not  to  chance,  but  to 
certain  destruction  ? 

But  these  so-called  difficulties  are  highly  exaggerated ; 
and  such  as  they  are,  they  are  all  of  them  the -result  of 
the  evil  landlord  legislation  of  past  times.  I  would  say, 
“  Repeal  all  your  landlord-made  land  laws,  and  the 
tenant  question  is  settled.”  Leave  the  land  question,  as 
O’Connell  suggested,  “to  the  operation  of  the  old  Eng¬ 
lish  common  law,  which  made  depopulation  a  felony — 
which  secured  the  tenant  as  firmly  in  his  patch  of  soil 
as  it  did  the  proprietor  in  his  estate.”  But  as  this  need 
not  be  expected,  I  would,  as  the  next  expedient,  add, 
first,  repeal  at  one  stroke  a  number  of  these  wicked  laws, 
each  adding  to  the  power  and  privileges  of  the  landlord ; 
and  then  declare  by  law,  that  while  the  tenant  pays  his 

*  Mill’s  Principles  of  Polit.  Econ.  B.  11,  c.  2  &  6.  Sismondi 
Studies  in  Polit.  Econ.  Third  Essay,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


47 


rent — a  rent  set  on  his  farm  by  upright  sworn  govern¬ 
ment  valuators — let  him  be  as  secure  in  his  holding  as 
is  the  landlord  in  his  estate.  To  repeat  it,  this  proposi¬ 
tion  is  called  “  revolution,”  “  confiscation,”  and  such 
vile  names.  But  epithets  are  not  arguments ;  nor  can 
we  see  how  a  man’s  property  is  “  confiscated,”  while  it 
pays  him  regularly  five  per  cent. — while  he  may  go  into 
the  market  with  it  any  day,  and  dispose  of  it  at  20,  or 
perhaps  30  years’  purchase.  Is  that  £900,000,000  of 
the  sinking  fund  “confiscated”  property1?  Yet  not  a 
single  owner  of  the  scrips,  representing  it,  can  lay  a 
finger  on  the  capital ;  but  he  can  do  what  is  just  as  good 
— just  an  equivalent — send  these  little  paper  debentures 
to  his  broker,  and  get  in  exchange  solid  gold  and  bank¬ 
notes,  or  any  other  kind  of  property  in  the  market.  So 
with  the  landlord :  let  him,  if  he  wills  it,  retain  the 
land,  and  bequeath  it  to  his  family ;  let  it,  even  if  you 
will,  descend  in  cruel  feudal  entail  to  his  latest  poste¬ 
rity,  but  in  the  name  of  common  noon-day  justice,  while 
you  confer  on  him  all  these  monster  rights,  do  not 
superadd  to  them  the  monstrous  wrong  of  absolute  pro¬ 
prietorship,  without  regard  either  to  the  private  rights  of 
the  many,  or  the  public  interests  of  the  State.  The 
same  cry  was  raised  in  Prussia  some  sixty  years  ago,  as 
we  shall  see  further  on.  The  great  lords  there  then,  as 
here  now,  saw  nothing  but  “  confiscation  and  spoliation” 
in  Stein’s  and  Hardenberg’s  plans.  They  yielded  after 
a  struggle  and  with  a  bad  grace ;  and  we  are  assured 
that  their  condition  is  doubly  better  now  than  it  was  in 
the  days  of  their  feudal  monopoly  of  the  land* — “ad¬ 
vanced  a  century.” 

This  Prussian  scheme,  if  it  could  be  adopted,  would 
in  my  opinion  be,  beyond  all  comparison,  the  best  for 


*  Lord  Brougham,  v.  infra. 


48 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


both  proprietors  and  people.  Constant  absentees  should 
be  made  sell  out  all  their  estates  in  lots  suitable  to  small 
resident  purchasers.  In  this  category,  of  course,  are  in¬ 
cluded  the  absentee  “  companies.”  Large  proprietors 
should  be  made  to  part  with  a  certain  proportion,  at,  of 
course,  a  reasonable  figure.  Every  tenant  should  have 
the  right  to,  gradually,  say  in  twenty  years,  buy  out  his 
farm,  advancing,  annually,  a  certain  portion  of  the  pur- 
chase-money,  with  interest  on  the  rest.  This  would  be 
the  nearest  approximation  to  the  Prussian  system;  but  as 
danger  is  not  near  enough  the  landlords’  door  for  the 
adoption  of  such  a  scheme,  the  next  best  is  tenant-security, 
by  immunity  from  eviction  during  payment  of  stipulated 
valuation  rent.  Paley  declares  that  “  the  first  rule  of 
national  policy  requires  that  the  occupier  should  have 
sufficient  power  over  the  soil  for  its  cultivation  ;  it  is  in¬ 
different  to  the  public  in  whose  hands  this  power  resides, 
if  it  be  rightly  used ;  it  matters  not  to  whom  the  land 
belongs  if  it  be  well  cultivated.”  He  regards  tenure  at 
will  as  “  conditions  of  tenure  which  condemn  the  land 
itself  to  perpetual  sterility.”  Therefore  he  considers  that 
legislation,  putting  an  end  to  such  anomalies,  “  whilst  it 
has  in  view  the  amelioration  of  the  soil,  and  tenders  an 
equitable  compensation  for  every  right  it  takes  away, 
is  neither  more  arbitrary  nor  more  dangerous  to  the 
stability  of  property  than  that  which  is  done  in  the  con¬ 
struction  of  roads,  bridges,  embankments,  canals,  and 
indeed  in  almost  every  public  work  in  which  private 
owners  of  property  are  obliged  to  accept  that  price  for 
their  property  which  an  indifferent  jury  may.  award.”* 
Of  course  not.  But  feudal  ideas  and  traditions  so  dis¬ 
tort  the  judgment  of  Irish  landlords  that  any  interference, 
even  on  the  part  of  the  supreme  legislature  between  the 


*  Moral  Phil.,  p.  425. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


49 


absolute  feudal  sway  of  tlie  descendants  of  robber  in¬ 
truders,  and  the  victims  of  their  rapacity,  is  denounced 
as  a  violation  of  the  first  principles  of  justice  and  right. 

My  Lord  Clanriekarde  and  others  of  his  class,  who  fancy 
that  the  very  stability  of  the  kingdom  depends  on  the 
existence  of  “large  estates,”  and  who  are  shocked  at  the 
idea  no  less  of  “fixity  of  tenure  ”  than  of  “  peasant 
proprietorship,”  will  be  shocked  still  more  at  the 
enunciation  of  such  doctrines.  But,  take  care  the 
shock  may  not  be  greater  by-and-by,  from  the  result  of 
the  refusal  to  entertain  them.  Let  them  remember  the 
story  of  the  sibylline  books — one  cost  in  the  end  what  was 
demanded,  originally,  for  the  three.  In  a  few  years  to 
come,  when  that  “  cloud  in  the  west,  now  not  bigger 
than  a  man’s  hand,”  may  break  over  their  heads  in  fire 
and  fury,  those  who  are  now  demanding  in  vain  pro¬ 
tection  against  the  savage  fury  of  territorial  “  felonious  ” 
tyrants,  may,  when  their  turn  of  power  comes,  be  tempted 
to  act  by  their  oppressors  with  the  same  amount  of  con¬ 
sideration  which  the  latter  scrupled  not  to  extend  to 
them.  It  was  thus  it  happened  in  France.  A  few  con¬ 
cessions  of  essential  rights  "were  arrogantly  denied  by 
crown  and  coronet.  In  due  time  the  chapeaux  rouge  took 
the  place  of  the  diadem  on  the  royal  head ;  a  little  more, 
and  that  head  ceased  to  sit  on  the  royal  neck;  while  coro- 
neted  heads  and  coronets  were  scattered  over  the  high¬ 
ways  of  the  land,  “  strewn  like  leaves  in  autumn.” 

God  forbid  it  should  ever  come  to  that  with  us ;  but 
to  something  approaching  that  will  and  must  it  come  in 
the  end,  unless  something  be  done  to  protect  the  tenant 
from  the  tyranny  and  rapacity  of  the  landlord.  As  for 
these  peddling  provisions  called  “  compensation  for  un¬ 
exhausted  improvements,”  they  seem  as  if  spoken  in 
mockery.  They  actually  assume  the  “  right  ”  to  absolute 
ownership  of  the  land,  as  of  a  hat  or  a  coat,  on  the  part 

D 


50 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


of  the  actual  owners.  Until  this  fallacy  be  dissipated 
there  can  be  no  satisfactory,  no  final  legislation  on  the 
great  question.  Any  legislation  grounded  on  that  assump¬ 
tion  must  be  essentially  vicious.  Any  legislation  ignoring 
the  tenant’s  right  to  live  on  the  land  he  tills,  and  leaving 
him  liable  to  arbitrary  expulsion,  will  only  make  matters 
wmrse.  Let  the  correlative  rights  and  duties  of  both 
landlord  and  tenant  be  based  on  the  axiom,  that  nature’s 
supreme  law  has  given  the  peasant  as  good  a  claim  to  his 
cot  as  the  peer  to  his  castle,  and  that  the  crime  of  the  latter 
in  levelling  the  cot,  while  the  rent  is  paid,  is  as  great, 
before  high  heaven,  as  that  of  the  former  in  mining  the 
castle  while  its  occupant  left  the  peasant  undisturbed. 
It  is  absolutely  essential  that  wTe  shake  off  the  trammels 
of  prejudices  and  the  tyranny  of  preconceived  ideas — ideas 
formed  from  a  state  of  things,  and  in  a  state  of  society, 
superinduced  by  a  long  reign  of  force  and  ascendency, 
when  the  cries  for  justice  were  drowned  by  the  roar  of 
blind  passion  and  infuriate  bigotry.  The  reductio  ad  ab- 
surdum  argument  applies,  with  all  its  force,  to  the  case. 
Given  that  a  landlord  has  a  right  from  nature  or  God  to 
evict  at  will,  you  may,  in  twelve  months,  have  Ireland 
trusting  to  8,000  or  10,000  families.  They  alone  have  the 
“  right  ”  to  remain  on  the  soil.  For  them  alone  did  God 
create  a  country  capable,  with  proper  culture  and  under 
a  paternal  government,  to  support,  as  we  shall  see  further 
on,  20,000,000  of  people  !  !  As  such  an  idea  of  the 
divine  will  in  creating  our  lovely  island  is  revolting  to  our 
very  instincts,  we  are  driven  to  conclude  that  the  land¬ 
lords  have  not  from  nature  such  a  right ;  therefore  that 
they  should  not  have  it  from  law ;  therefore  that,  by  law, 
they  should  be  debarred  from  its  exercise  ;  therefore  that 
the  tenant  has  a  right  from  God  and  nature  to  protection 
against  such  exercise,  and  therefore  to  security  of  tenure 
in  some  direct  shape  and  form. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


51 


In  one  word,  the  tenant  must  he  as  secure  in  the  tenure 
of  his  farm  as  the  proprietor  in  that  of  his  estate.  The 
land  was  created  by  divine  power,  goodness,  and  wisdom, 
for  one  as  well  as  the  other.  Therefore  one  should  not 
have  power  to  expel  the  other, — a  unit  power  to  expel  a 
thousand ;  and  therefore  society  should  protect  the  thou¬ 
sand  against  the  power,  the  rapacity,  the  vengeance,  and 
all  the  other  evil  passions  of  the  one.  To  “  remove  land¬ 
marks,”  has  merited  the  reprobation  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
(Job.  xxiv.).  "YVhat  then  must  it  be  to  remove  unoffending 
man  altogether  from  the  very  face  of  the  land  i  This  fell 
power  of  eviction  at  will  must  be  annihilated.  The  hard¬ 
working  tiller  of  the  soil  must  have  a  foothold  on  the 
land  he  fertilizes  by  his  sweat.  The  man  who  gives 
nothing  to  that  land,  but,  on  the  contrary,  devours  its 
produce,  far  away  from,  it,  must  not  also  have  legal  power 
of  life  and  death  over  its  industrious  cultivator.  If  he 
does  much  longer — Fee  Victis. 

Without  this  absolute  security  of  tenure  any  land  bill 
will  prove  an  illusion;  and  as  the  people  are  quite 
resolved  on  no  longer  submitting  to  illusions,  they  are 
equally  resolved  on  spurning  as  such  any  measure  which 
does  not  make  them  as  free  and  independent  in  their 
tenure  of  land,  while  they  pay  a  just  rent,  as  is  the  land¬ 
lord  himself  in  the  possession  of  his  property.  The 
landlord  must  no  more  have  power  to  evict  the  tenant 
who  earns  and  pays  rent,  than  the  sovereign  has  to  evict 
the  landlord  who  earns  and  pays  and  does  nothing.  The 
landlord  must  no  more  have  power  to  raise  rents  at  will 
than  the  sovereign  to  impose  arbitrary  taxes.  The  last 
of  a  long  race  of  kings  was  justly  expelled  the  kingdom 
for  his  arbitrary  use  of  arbitrary  power.  His  illustrious 
grandfather  lost  his  head  for  similar  excesses  ;  why  should 
royal  diadems  have  been  “  kicked  into  the  Boyne  ”  less 
than  two  hundred  years  ago,  and  royal  trunks  made 


52 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


lieadless,  a  generation  or  two  before,  for  offences  not 
approaching  the  misdeeds  of  Irish  landlords  in  heartless 
arbitrariness  to-day,  while  these  landlords  are  still  per¬ 
mitted  to  revel  in  their  inhuman  excesses  1 

“  If,”  said  the  author  of  the  “  Sophisms  of  Free  Trade,” 
nearly  thirty  years  ago — “  If,  instead  of  the  old  precarious 
holdings,  there  he  an  allotment  in  fee,  or  for  a  long  term,  with 
a  nominal,  or  even  moderate,  but  fixed  rent,  what  has  hap¬ 
pened  on  the  sandy  wastes  of  the  Loiv  Countries,  will  happen 
in  Ireland — the  desert  will  soon  rejoice .  The  public  interest 
and  your  own  requires  the  sacrifice — if  sacrifice  it  be.” 

Government  should  be  prompted  to  some  such  great 
effort,  not  merely  by  the  cry  of  the  landholders,  that  they 
are  losing  their  estates,  but  much  more  by  the  cry  of  the' 
masses  that  they  are  losing  their  lives.  Humanity  is,  it 
cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  the  profoundest  policy.  But 
in  all  questions  of  duty,  deliberation  itself  is  disgraceful 
where  the  duty  is  clear. 

An  outcry  against  what  would  be  called  an  agrarian 
law  might  be  raised.  But  what  more  destructive  agra¬ 
rian  law  can  be  conceived  than  the  present  Irish  Poor- 
law?  How  are  proprietors  and  encumbrancers  most 
effectually  despoiled  ?  By  a  sacrifice — perhaps  a  tempo¬ 
rary  sacrifice — of  a  part  of  their  estates  or  security,  not 
only  for  the  preservation,  but  for  the  incalculable  augmen¬ 
tation  of  the  value  of  the  residue,  or  by  proceedings  for  the 
forced  sale  of  encumbered  estates. 

Here  we  are  deluded  by  our  English  notions.  We 
assume  that  Ireland  is  necessarily  to  be  everywhere  par¬ 
celled  out  in  large  farms,  and  cultivated  by  day  labourers, 
in  receipt  of  wages,  after  the  English  system.  But  it  is 
still  a  matter  of  controversy,  not  only  in  England  and 
Ireland,  but  on  the  continent,  and  particularly  in  France, 
which,  on  the  whole,  is,  after  all,  the  best — large  farms 
or  small — la  grande,  on  la  petite  culture.  It  is  certain  that 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


53 


in  Belgium  mere  occupation  of  the  most  arid  and  sandy 
deserts  in  Europe,  by  peasant  squatters  without  capital, 
has  gradually  transformed  those  deserts  into  the  most 
fertile  land.  It  is  the  opinion  of  many  practical  persons 
well  qualified  to  decide,  that  “  small  pieces  of  land,  occu¬ 
pied  by  the  labourer  and  his  family,  not  as  heretofore,  at 
a  high  rent,  with  an  uncertain  tenure,  but  in  fee,  or  for 
a  long  term,  with  security  for  the  reimbursement  of  im¬ 
provements,  is  the  sort  of  cultivation  which  is  best  for  a 
large  part  of  Ireland.”* 

All  this  goes  much  farther  than  I  seek  to  reach. 
Though  to  all  it  would  be  a  matter  of  preference,  I  do 
not  insist  on  the  English  minister  of  to-day  playing  the 
Stein  and  Hardenberg  of  Prussia  sixty  years  ago.  I 
merely  demand,  as  a  matter  of  natural,  rational,  instinc¬ 
tive,  human  right,  that  the  peasant,  in  his  own  humble 
way,  be  as  secure  in  his  hut  as  the  peer  in  his  castle — that 
to  him  the  hut  become  in  fact,  what  it  is  in  fiction  of  law, 
really  “  a  castle.” 

“  Is  a  system,”  demands  Sadlier,  thus  forestalling  by 
forty  years  the  sentiment  of  a  Lord  Clarendon,  “which  can 
only  be  supported  by  brute  force,  and  which  is  kept  up 
by  constant  blood-letting,  to  be  perpetuated  for  ever  ? 
Are  we  still  to  garrison  a  country  to  protect  the  property 
of  those  whose  conduct  occasions  all  the  evils  under  which 
the  country  has  groaned  for  centuries — property  which  has 
been  treated  in  a  manner  that  it  would  not  be  worth  a  day's 
‘purchase  were  its  proprietors  its  sole  protectors  ;  but  the  pre¬ 
sence  of  a  large  body  of  military  and  police  enables  them 
to  conduct  themselves  with  as  little  apprehension  as 
remorse?”  Eecent  events  from  Tipperary  to  Galway  pretty 
significantly  suggest,  that  “  remorse  ”  being  out  of  the 
question,  “apprehension”  at  least  should  dictate  to  those 
mere  monsters,  “  at  least  (that)  one  degree  of  mercy  ” 


*  “  Sophisms  of  Free  Trade,”  by  an  English  Barrister. 


54 


THE -IRISH  LANDLORD 


which  Dean  Swift  recommended  them  long  ago.  In  fact, 
the  people  have  come  to  the  fixed  belief  that,  all  law 
being  on  the  landlords’  side,  well-grounded  apprehension 
alone  can  bring  them  to  a  sense  of  common  humanity. 
But  Sadlier  proceeds — “  The  possessions  of  the  whole 
empire  would  be  lost  to  their  owners  were  such  con¬ 
duct  general  ;  and  are  these  so  meritorious  a  class  that 
they  are  to  be  protected  in  the  audacious  outrage  of  all 
those  duties,  upon  the  direct  and  reciprocal  discharge  of 
which  the  whole  frame  of  the  social  system  is  founded  ? 
If  they  persist  in  this  course  let  them  do  so  at  their 
peril;  the  British  soldier  is  too  noble  a  being  to 
be  degraded  into  the  exactor  of  enormous  rents.”* 
Yes,  to  repeat  it,  “  AT  their  peril.”  We  proclaim 
it  from  the  house-top,  if  now,  in  the  wane  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  government  will  not  effectually 
protect  us  from  all  and  every  aggression  of  these  territo¬ 
rial  tyrants,  nothing  remains  to  us  but  to  protect  our¬ 
selves.  It  is  a  very  melancholy  alternative — the  very 
last  that  should  be  had  recourse  .to ;  but,  finally  unpro¬ 
tected  by  constitutional  law,  what  remains  to  the  unfor¬ 
tunate  down-hunted  Irish  tenant  (a  non  tenenclo  it  would 
seem  so  called)  but  to  protect  himself  and  his  by  a  law 
higher,  earlier,  holier  than  any  positive  human  enact¬ 
ment — the  supreme  natural  law  of  self-defence  as  against 
brutal  aggression  h  To  repeat  it,  the  alternative  is  abso¬ 
lutely  appalling  ;  but  it  is  only  a  choice  between  evils — 
the  extirpation  of  a  tyrant  class,  or  the  extermination 
of  a  noble  race — in  default  of  just  and  wise  legislation. 

The  English  barrister  already  referred  to;  Sergeant 
Byles,  puts  the  whole  case  in  a  nutshell  when  he  says  : 
“  A  portion  of  the  land  itself  must  be  allotted  to  each 
family  whom  you  (the  landlord)  or  your  new  district 
cannot  employ.  And  there  must  be  no  more  letting  of 

*  “Ireland,  its  Evils  and  Remedies, ”  sec.  edition,  pp.  161  2. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


55 


land  in  small  patches,  with  uncertain  tenures  at  high 
rents !” 

But  the  whole  passage  is  well  worth  reproduction. 
Here  it  is : — 

“  Our  first  measure  really  directed  to  the  social  con¬ 
dition  of  Ireland  was  the  Irish  Poor-law.  But  what  a 
poor-law  !  and  with  what  other  measures  accompanied  ! 

“  How  plant  Ireland  afresh?  or  rather  the  disorganized 
rural  districts  of  the  south  and  west  of  Ireland  ? 

“  A  gigantic  scheme,  it  must  he  confessed,  and  not  to 
he  expected  from  any  statesman  professing  the  let-alone 
doctrines  now  so  fashionable — hut  quite  practicable,  and 
practicable  at  far  less  expense  than  Ireland  has  entailed 
on  England  in  a  single  year. 

“  Every  family,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  must,  in 
the  first  instance,  he  settled  by  Act  of  Parliament  in 
some  district  of  moderate  size,  with  suitable  provisions  for 
gaining  other  settlements,  so  that,  on  the  one  hand,  a 
proprietor  may  not,  by  a  clearance,  be  able  to  rid  his 
estate  of  its  fair  proportion  of  the  poor. 

“  A  change  of  residence  alone  must  be  a  change  of 
settlement.  The  law  w~ould  then  thus  address  the  pro¬ 
prietor  of  every  district :  ‘  Here  are  your  poor,  maintain 
them  you  must ;  and  therefore  you  had  better  employ 
them,  as  you  will  soon  discover.  They  are  the  first  charge 
on  the  land.  But  you  now  know  the  worst.  Continue 
to  maintain  and  employ  these ;  the  land  is  ample,  and 
will  leave  you  a  large  surplus,  and  you  shall  have  no 
other  poor  to  maintain.’ 

“  We  should  thus  find  labour  and  the  land  artificially 
brought  together  by  law,  and  married  at  once, — a  fruit¬ 
ful  union,  which  the  natural  course  of  things  might, 
or  might  not  have  affected  after  the  lapse  of  several 
generations. 

“  But  the  proprietor  or  occupier  might  say,  and  with 
justice,  ‘  I  have  no  money.  How  can  I  pay  either  rents 


5G 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


or  wages  V  The  law  again  replies,  ‘  I  don’t  ask  it.  It 
may  not  be  possible.  It  may  be  that  large  farms  and 
paid  labourers  are  not  suited  for  Ireland  as  they  are  for 
England;  but  still  the  principle  must  be  followed  out.’”* 

These  poor  are  the  first  charge  on  the  land.  “A  portion 
of  the  land  itself  must  he  allotted  to  every  family  whom  you 
or  your  new  district  will  not ,  or  cannot  employ.  And  there 
must  he  no  more  letting  of  land  in  small  patches ,  with  un¬ 
certain  tenures ,  at  high  rents.  •  THE  POOR  MUST  LIVE, 
and  if  they  are  not  to  live  on  the  land,  the  interest  of 
the  state  requires  that  they  should  have  every  encourage¬ 
ment  and  spur  to  improvement.” 

This  is  Christian  philosophy  indeed — not  the  barren, 
narrow,  selfish  philosophy  of  the  mere  political  econo¬ 
mist,  but  that  philosophy  which  starts  with  the  funda¬ 
mental  truth,  that  “  the  poor  (as  well  as  the  rich)  have  a 
right  to  live,”  to  live  not  as  swine,  not  as  squalid 
paupers,  but  as  men,  on  the  land,  or  by  the  land  which 
God  created  for  the  children  of  men. 

And  this  essential  truth  Irish  landlords  and  their 
henchmen,  the  M‘Cullochs,  Malthuses,  and  Martins,  of 
the  mere  political  philosophy  school,  totally  ignore. 
The  life  of  a  few  thousand  exterminators  is  worth 
30,000  bayonets  a  year,  3,000,000  human  lives  in  twenty 
years,  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  daily  happiness  from  year 
to  year  of  6,000,000  or  5,500,000  more. 

“  How  plant  Ireland  afresh  V  A  startling,  yet  not  an 
unnatural  question.  Ireland  has  been  “  planted”  over 
and  over  again ;  but,  strange  phenomenon  !  her  people 
are  as  yet  to  be  rooted  out  of  her  soil.  By  right,  natural 
and  divine,  that  soil — the  use  and  property  of  that  soil — 
is  theirs,  but,  by  the  wrong  of  man,  their  title  is  ignored, 
and  not  alone  the  use  and  usufruct,  but  the  very  “  pro¬ 
perty”  of  the  soil  was  once  conferred  on  a  few  “strangers;” 

*  “  Sophisms  of  Free  Trade,”  by  an  English  Barrister. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


57 


and,  by  a  prescription  of  wrong,  that  “  property,”  ab¬ 
solute  and  irrevocable,  is  confirmed  to  their  descendants. 
Again  we  must  not  be  misunderstood  as  suggesting 
the  abstraction  or  alienation  of  'one  farthing’s  worth  of 
that  “  property”  from  its  actual  possessors.  Though 
we  hold  that  the  original  titles  were  radically  null  and 
void,  we  are  not  yet  blind  to  the  difficulties  that  would 
lie  in  the  way  of  their  peaceful  and  legal  revocation. 
The  great  bulk  of  Irish  proprietors,  before  the  sales 
effected  in  the  Incumbered  and  Landed  Estates  Courts, 
held  under  patents  conferred  by  the  canting  marauder 
Oliver  Cromwell.  “  The  latter,”  says  Mr.  Butt,  “  is  the 
title  of  by  far  the  greater  portion  of  them.  Probably,  no 
man  at  the  Irish  bar  ever  saw  a  devolution  of  title  that 
did  not  commence  with  a  patent  granting  a  forfeited 
estate.”* 

Such  is  the  title  to  their  estates  of  the  great  auto¬ 
crats  who  ring  the  changes  on  “  the  rights  of  property,” 
“  tenant  right — landlord  wrong,”  &c.,  &c.  But  to  par¬ 
ticularize,  let  me  furnish  the  following  from  Lord  Clare, 
quoted  by  Mr.  Butt,  premising  that  in  my  opinion  the 
argument  in  favour  of  “  fixity  of  tenure”  could  not,  by 
human  possibility,  be  more  clearly,  forcibly,  strikingly 
put,  than  it  is  by  the  learned  leader  of  the  Irish  bar 
himself  in  his  inimitable  pamphlet : — 

“  After  desolating  the  country  for  seventeen  years,” 
said  his  lordship — then  Lord  Fitzgibbon — (the  rebellion 
of  1G41) — “it  terminated  in  the  extinction  of  the  prin¬ 
cipal  families,  and  in  nearly  a  total  revolution  of  the 
property  of  Ireland ;  for,  upon  the  final  settlement  of  the 
Acts  of  Settlement  and  Explanation,  it  appears,  by  the 
Down  Survey,  that  7,800,000  acres  of  land  were  set  out 
by  the  Court  of  Claims,  principally,  if  not  entirely,  in  ex¬ 
clusion  of  the  old  Irish  proprietors.”  On  which  Mr.  Butt 


*  “  Laud  Tenure  in  Ireland,”  p.  24. 


58 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


most  appropriately  remarks:  “The  old  proprietors  in¬ 
cluded  the  Anglo-Norman  families,  who  had  comednto 
Ireland  with  Strongbow;  a  sufficient  answer  to  those 
who  tell  us  we  ought  as  well  look  for  traces  of  the  Norman 
conquest  as  producing  discontent  in  England  as  seek  in 
Irish  confiscations  for  the  origin  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
land  question.  What  would  now  be  the  state  of  England 
if  Charles  II.  had  been  restored  by  French  bayonets,  and 
if  two-thirds  of  all  English  lands  had  been  allocated  to  the 
French  and  Eoman  Catholic  adventurers  who  regained 
for  him  the  crown — nay  more,  if  these  proprietors  had  been 
guarded  by  laws  that  kept  down  the  mass  of  the  people, 
while  the  exercise  of  the  most  extreme  right  of  property 
was  enforced  for  them  by  an  overwhelming  French  mili¬ 
tary  force  V 

But  the  proprietors  will  never  admit  the  entrance  of 
such  unpleasant  comparisons  into  their  minds.  They  are 
the  proprietors,  per  fat  aut  nephas .  The  descendants  of 
“  the  disinherited  ”  are  serfs  on  their  estates,  and  the 
new-fangled  landlord,  and  the  wmrthy  descendant  of  the 
new-fangled  landlord,  actually  claim  credit  for  not  having 
teetotally  “  cleared  ”  oft*  these  serfs,  though  it  has  been 
no  fault  of  the  new-fangled  that  the  “  clearances  ”  have 
not  been  made  complete  a  full  century  ago.  But  Lord 
Clare  proceeds  :  “  From  the  final  execution  of  the  Acts, 
of  Settlement  and  Explanation  down  to  the  present  day, 
the  people  of  this  country  have  consisted  of  two  distinct 
and  separate  castes — the  one,  with  a  short  intermission 
possessed  of  the  whole  property  and  power  of  the  country, 
the  other  expelled  from  both.” 

How  a  kingdom  thus  “divided  against  itself”  has  been 
able  to  stand,  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  another 
kingdom,  of  which  it  has  been  so  well  said, 


Nostra  miseria  magna  es, 


59 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 

studiously  fomented  the  divisions  for  the  purpose  of  thus 
the  more  securely  perpetuating  her  own  domination. 

The  following  I  furnish  with  Mr.  Butt’s  running  com¬ 
mentary  : — 

“  He  thus  describes  the  condition  of  the  Protestant 
settlers  at  the  Revolution,  a  condition  which  remained 
unaltered  when  he  spoke  : — 

“  ‘  They  were  an  English  colony  settled  in  an  enemy’s 
country,  which  had  been  reduced  by  the  sword  to  a 
sullen  and  refractory  allegiance.  The  experience  of  a 
century  has  proved  that,  from  an  opposition  of  laws, 
customs,  interests,  and  religion,  the  natives  of  the  country 
have  contracted  an  incurable  hatred  to  them. 

“  ‘  In  this  colony,  thus  circumstanced  towards  the  native 
population,  confiscations  had  vested  the  whole  property 
of  the  kingdom. 

“  ‘  The  fiercest  civil  convulsions  of  England  left  no  such 
“  thunder  scars  ”  upon  her  social  state.’ 

“In  1800  Lord  Clare’s  language  was  more  decided  and 
distinct.  I  would  earnestly  recommend  his  speech  upon 
the  question  of  the  Union  to  the  careful  study  of  those 
who  think  that  the  condition  of  the  proprietory  right  in  Ire¬ 
land  is  that  which  belongs  to  an  ordinary  and  settled  state  of 
social  life: — 

“  ‘It  is,’  says  Lord  Clare,  ‘  a  subject  of  curious  and  im¬ 
portant  speculation  to  look  back  to  the  forfeitures  of 
Ireland  incurred  in  the  last  century.  The  superficial 
contents  of  the  island  are  calculated  at  11,042,682  acres.’ 
(I  may  here  remark  that  the  11,042,682  acres  must  be 
the  cultivated  land,  the  whole  area  of  Ireland  being  over 
9,000,000,  nearly  10,000,000,  more.)  ‘Let  us  now  ex¬ 
amine  the  state  of  these  forfeitures. 


GO 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  ‘  Confiscated  in  the  reign  of  Janies  I. 


The  whole  Province  of  Ulster 
Set  out  by  the  Court  of  Claims  at  the 
Eestoration  - 
Forfeitures  in  1688 


ACRES. 

2,836,837 

7,800,000 

1,060,702 


Total,  -  11,697,629 

So  that  the  whole  of  your  island  has  been  confiscated, 
with  the  exception  of  the  estates  of  five  or  six  old  families 
of  English  blood,  some  of  whom  had  been  attainted  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  but  recovered  their  possessions 
before  Tyrone’s  rebellion,  and  had  the  good  fortune  to 
escape  the  pillage  of  the  English  Eepublic  inflicted  by 
Cromwell,  and  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  the  island  has 
been  confiscated  twice,  or  perhaps  thrice,  in  the  course  of 
two  centuries.  The  situation,  therefore,  of  the  Irish  nation 
at  the  Eevolution  stands  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the 
inhabited  world.  If  the  wars  of  England  carried  on  here 
since  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  had  been  waged  against  a 
foreign  enemy,  the  inhabitants  would  have  retained  their 
possessions  under  the  established  law  of  civilized  nations, 
and  their  country  would  have  been  annexed  as  a  province 
to  the  British  Empire.  But  the  continued  and  the  per¬ 
severing  resistance  of  Ireland  to  the  British  crown  during 
the  whole  of  the  last  century,  was  mere  rebellion,  and  the 
municipal  law  of  England  attached  upon  the  crime. 
What,  then,  was  the  situation  of  Ireland  at  the  Eevolu¬ 
tion  1  and  what  is  it  to-day  ?  The  whole  property  and 
power  of  the  country  have  been  conferred  by  successive 
monarchs  of  England  upon  the  English  colony,  comprised 
of  three  sets  of  English  adventurers,  who  poured  into  this 
country  at  the  termination  of  three  successive  rebellions. 
Confiscation  is  their  common  title ,  and  from  the  first  settle¬ 
ment  they  have  been  hemmed  in  on  every  side  by  the  old 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


61 


inhabitants  of  the  island,  brooding  over  their  discontents 
in  sullen  indignation.’ 

“  And  speaking  of  the  Cromwellian  ‘set  of  adventurers’ 
— ‘  motley  adventurers  ’ — he  says  : — 

“  4  Cromwell’s  first  act  was  to  collect  all  the  native  Irish 
who  had  survived  the  general  desolation,  and  who  had 
remained  in  the  country,  and  to  transplant  them  into 
Connaught,  which  had  been  completely  depopulated  and 
laid  waste  in  the  progress  of  the  rebellion.  They  were 
ordered  to  retire  thence  by  a  certain  day,  and  forbidden 
to  repass  the  Shannon  under  pain  of  death,  and  this 
sentence  of  depopulation  was  rigidly  enforced  until  the 
Restoration.  Their  ancient  possessions  were  seized  and 
given  up  to  the  conquerors,  as  were  the  possessions  of 
every  man  who  had  taken  part  in  the  rebellion  or  followed 
the  fortunes  of  the  king  after  the  murder  of  Charles  the 
.First.  And  this  whole  fund  was  distributed  among  the 
officers  and  soldiers  of  Cromwell’s  army,  in  satisfaction  of 
arrears  of  their  pay,  and  adventurers  who  had  advanced 
money  to  defray  the  expenses  of  the  war.  And  thus 
a  new  colony  of  new  settlers,  composed  of  all  the  various 
sects  that  then  infested  England — Independents,  Ana¬ 
baptists,  Seceders,  Brownists,  Socinians,  Willenarclans, 
and  dissenters  of  every  description,  many  of  them  in¬ 
fected  with  the  leaven  of  democracy,  poured  into  Ireland, 
and  were  put  into  possession  of  the  ancient  inheritance 
of  its  inhabitants.  And  I  speak  with  great  personal 
respect  of  the  men,  when  I  state  that  a  very  consi¬ 
derable  portion  of  the  opulence  and  power  of  the  kingdom 
of  Ireland  continues  at  this  day  in  the  descendants  of 
those  motley  adventurers'  ”* 

By  a  piece  of  ingratitude,  almost  without  parallel  in 
history,  this  wholesale  confiscation  was  confirmed  to 
regicides  by  the  restored  son  of  the  murdered  king.  This 
*  “ Land  Tenure  in  Ireland.” 


62 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


was  effected  by  the  Act  of  Settlement  and  Explanation, 
which  first  vested  all  the  confiscated  property  in  the  crown, 
which  then  restored  it  to  the  “  motley  crew  of  adven¬ 
turers,”  to  the  exclusion  of  the  “disinherited.”  Having 
thus,  in  the  first  instance,  vested  three-fourths  of  the 
lands  and  personal  property  of  the  inhabitants  of  this 
island  in  the  king,  he  appoints  commissioners  with  full 
and  exclusive  authority  to  hear  and  determine  all  claims 
upon  the  general  funds,  whether  of  officers  or  soldiers  for 
arrears  of  pay,  of  adventurers  who  had  advanced  money 
for  carrying  on  the  war,  of  innocent  Papists  as  they  are 
called — in  other  words,  of  the  old  inhabitants  of  the 
island  who  had  been  dispossessed  by  Cromwell,  not  for 
having  taken  a  part  in  the  rebellion  against  the  English 
crown,  but  for  their  attachment  to  the  fortunes  of 
Charles  II.  But  with  respect  to  this  class  of  sufferers, 
who  might  naturally  have  expected  a  preference  of  claim, 
a  clause  is  introduced  by  which  they  are  postponed,  after 
a  decree  of  innocence  by  the  commissioners,  until  previous 
reprisals  shall  be  made  to  Cromwell’s  soldiers  and  adven¬ 
turers,  who  had  obtained  possession  of  their  inheritance. 

“I  wish  gentlemen  who  call  themselves  the  dignified 
and  independent  Irish  nation,  to  know  that  7,800,000 
acres  of  land  were  set  out  under  this  Act  to  a  motley 
crew  of  English  adventurers,  civil  and  military,  nearly  to 
the  total  exclusion  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  island,  many 
of  whom,  wh'o  were  innocent  of  the  rebellion,  lost  their 
inheritance,  as  well  for  the  difficulties  conjured  up  in  the 
Court  of  Claims  in  the  proofs  required  of  their  innocence ,  as 
from  a  deficiency  in  the  fund  for  reprisal  to  English  ad¬ 
venturers,  arising  chiefly  from  a  profuse  grant  made  by 
the  crown  to  the  Duke  of  York.”* 

And  it  is  the  descendants  of  this  “  motley  crew  ”  of 
public  robbers  that  raise  the  cry  to-day  of  “  the  sacred 

*  Lord  Clare’s  Speech. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


63 


rights  of  property,”  “  confiscation,”  and  so-forth,  when 
there  is  question,  not  of  restoring  their  plunder  to  the 
descendants  of  its  original  rightful  owners,  not  of  depriv¬ 
ing  themselves  of  a  single  sod  of  their  unjustly  acquired 
territorial  possessions,  but  of  securing  to  the  many  who 
are  born  on  the  soil  owned  by  their  fathers,  and  whose 
labour  and  sweat  enrich  that  soil,  a  foothold  thereon, 
and  exemption  from  the  capricious  and  tyrannical  oppres¬ 
sions  of  this  brood  of  marauders — this  progeny  of  £‘  a 
motley  crew  of  English  adventurers.”* 

Quis  tulerit  Gracchum  de  seditione  queer entem. 

Strange  enough,  indeed,  to  hear  a  Gracchus  inveigh 
against  sedition  ;  but  that  the  descendants  of  a  Cromwel- 
lian  “  soldier  ”  or  “  adventurer,”  who,  in  the  day  of  their 
strength,  showed  so  much  respect  for  the  “  sacred  rights 
of  property,”  whose  title  to  what  is  called  their  property 
is  simply  confiscation,  should  be  so  loud,  as  the  bulk  of 
the  Irish  landlords  of  this  time  are,  in  their  reprobation, 
not,  indeed,  and  to  repeat  it,  of  “  confiscation,”  or  “  spo¬ 
liation,”  but  of  any  attempt  to  limit  their  unlimited 
power  of  doing  wrong — a  power  so  hideously  and  un¬ 
scrupulously  exercised — is  a  phenomenon  which  only  the 
traditions  of  a  Cromwellian  spirit  could  produce.  Against 
all  law  and  right,  human  and  of  nature,  and  merely  by 
brute  force,  the  “  motley  crew”  first  obtained  absolute 
possession  of  the  land.  Against  all  right,  and  what 
ought  to  be  laws,  their  descendants  want  to  retain,  not 
possession  of  the  wide  acres  thus  iniquitously  alienated, 
but  such  absolute  ownership  as  would  deprive  millions 
of  any  right  even  to  breathe  on  the  land  ;  in  a  word,  an 
ownership  implying  that  the  land  thus  so  forcibly  and 
cruelly  abstracted  from  its  rightful  owners  was  originally 
created  by  the  Omnipotent  for  the  descendants  of  the 
“  motley  crew  ”  of  marauders. 

*  Speech,  10th  February,  1800. 


G4 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


In  fact,  had  they  been  put  into  possession  specially  by 
the  divine  hand  itself,  their  pretensions  could  not  he 
more  lofty,  their  claims  more  absolute  than  they  are. 
But  that  the  sons  of  intruders,  whose  title  to  their 
estates  is  founded  on  confiscations,  conducted  in  Ireland 
on  principles  involving  a  violation  of  all  the  laws  of 
civilized  nations,  should  claim  a  right  divine,  not  merely 
to  the  ownership  of  the  landed  “  property,”  their  “  title 
to  which  is  confiscation,”  but  to  “  doing  with  it  as  they 
like,”  is  to-day,  in  the  wane  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a, 
pretension  so  preposterous,  that  in  no  other  country  but 
the  trampled  province  of  a  dominant  nation  could  it  be, 
for  a  moment,  entertained.  But  can  the  leopard  change 
his  skin  1  and  of  the  veritable  Cromwellian  it  may  be 
truly  said  again  : — 

“  Duravit  ad  imum 

Qualis  ab  incepto  processerat  et  sibi  constat.  ” 

“Like  father,  like  son,”  and,  blind  to  the  mighty  changes 
which  “  intellect’s  march  ”  is  working  throughout  the 
world,  the  son  of  the  Cromwellian  will  lord  over  his  serfs 
of  to-day  as  despotically,  as  heartlessly,  as  his  trooper 
great-grand- sire  did  two  hundred  and  a  quarter  years 
ago. 

But  “  to  insist,”  as  Edmund  Burke  said,  “  on  every¬ 
thing  done  in  Ireland  at  the  Revolution,  would  be  to 
insist  on  the  severe  and  jealous  policy  of  a  conqueror  in 
the  crude  settlement  of  his  new  acquisition,  as  a  permar 
nent  rule  for  its  future  government.  This  no  power,  in 
any  country  that  I  ever  heard  of,  has  done  or  professed 
to  do,  except  in  Ireland.”* 

Not  alone  this,  but,  as  we  shall  see,  in  the  words  of 
W.  Bicheno,  “  Profit  being  almost  all  he  (the  Irish  land¬ 
lord)  aims  at,  every  new  project  is  favoured  as  it  assists 


*  Butt,  “  Land  Tenure  in  Ireland.” 


65 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 

liim  to  obtain  his  end.  The  laws  in  his  favor  are  already 
more  summary  and  stronger  than  they  are  in  England, 

and  he  is  yet  calling  for  additional  assistance . 

The  condition  of  the  peasantry  is  reduced  to  a  lower 
scale  by  every  new  power  that  is  created.  Every  fresh 
law  exonerates  the  proprietors  more  and  more  from 
cultivating  the  good  opinion  qf  their  dependents,  and, 
moreover,  removes  the  odium  of  any  oppression  from  the 
individual  who  ought  to  bear  it,  to  the  state.”* 

Thus  it  is  precisely  to-day.  Every  new  act  of  oppres¬ 
sion  on  the  part  of  the  “  brutal  upstart  of  yesterday,”  is 
credited  by  the  outraged  and  thus  disaffected  victim,  and 
his  million  sympathisers,  to  the  government  which  gives 
it  the  sanction  of  law. 

The  same  author  thus,  after  Lord  Clare,  describes  those 
Cromwellian  settlers  whose  grand-cliildren  have  made  all 
our  murderous  land  laws  : — 

“  All  former  settlers  had  found  it  their  interest  to 
adopt  the  system  of  the  country,  and  fall  in  with  the 
established  customs  of  the  people.  It  was  the  misfortune 
of  the  Cromwellians  to  go  thither  with  a  new  religion 
and  new  politics,  a  new  system  of  agriculture,  and  a  new 
relation  between  landlord  and  tenant,  subversive  of  every¬ 
thing  that  existed,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  human 
being.  They  carried  with  them  neither  attachments, 
sympathies,  social  ties,  nor  patrimonial  influence.”  f 
And  it  is  their  present  posterity  that  would  claim  the 
greater  part  of  Ireland  as  their  absolute  and  exclusive 
inheritance  by  right  of  nature  and  of  God. 

Paley  thus  defines  what  property  is,  and  in  order  to 
legislate  equitably  for  all  orders  and  grades  of  society, 
the  fundamental  concept  here  expressed  cannot  be  lost 
sight  of  :  “  The  introduction  of  property,”  says  he,  “  was 

*  “  Economy  of  Ireland,  ”  p.  164. 


f  Ibid. 
E 


66 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


consented  to  by  mankind  ”  (/  would  rather  say  was  recog¬ 
nized  as  a  social  necessity  by  mankind,  considering  the 
moral  constitution  of  man,  an  essential  condition  of  whose 
existence  is  to  live  in  what  is  called  society, — not,  indeed, 
in  the  Belgravian  or  conventional  drawing-room  sense  of 
the  term,  but  in  the  broad  religious  and  human  accept¬ 
ation,  as  meaning  a  living  of  men  among  one  another  as 
a  moral  whole,  and  not  each  one  for  and  by  himself,  to 
be  ruled  and  guided  only  by  his  own  whim,  pleasure,  or 
passion),  upon  the  expectation  and  condition  that  there 
should  be  left  to  every  one  a  sufficiency  for  his  subsistence ,  or 
the  means  of  procuring  it.  And,  therefore,  when  the 
partition  of  property  is  rigidly  maintained  against  the  claims 
of  indigence  and  distress ,  it  is  maintained  in  opposition  to  the 
intention  of  those  who  made  it ,  and  Him  who  is  supreme 
proprietor  of  everything,  and  who  has  filled  the  earth 
with  plenteousness/or  the  sustentcition  and  COMFORT  of  all 
whom  He  sends  into  it.”* 

“  Not  at  all,”  says  the  real  Cromwellian  landlord. 
“  Not  for  the  sustentation,  much  less  for  the  comfort  of 
all ;  it  is  only  for  my  special  indulgence,  luxury,  and 
riot.  As  for  the  Creator  thinking  of  my  serfs,  why,  the 
thought  is  profanation.”  And  yet  the  prophet  of  that 
supreme  Lord  of  all  land  proclaims — “  Eelieve  the  op¬ 
pressed,  judge  the  fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow.”  t 
(A  Cromwellian  banished  the  widowed  mother  of  the 
author  for  allowing  her  daughter  into  her  house  !  !  !) 
“  Is  not  this  the  fast  that  I  have  chosen,  to  loose  the 
bands  of  the  wicked,  to  let  the  oppressed  go  free,  and 
that  ye  break  every  yoke  t  Is  it  not  to  deal  thy  bread  to 
the  hungry,  and  that  thou  bring  the  poor  that  are  cast 
out  into  thy  house  (extermination  even  in  these  days  !) ; 
when  thou  seest  the  naked,  cover  him,  and  that  thou 


*•  Moral  Phil.  Book  V.  c.  iii. 


t  Is.  i.  17. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


67 


hide  not  thyself  from  thy  own  flesh.”* — The  great  pre¬ 
cept,  which  is  the,  fulfilling  of  the  Law  and  Prophets,  the 
essence  of  the  Decalogue,  the  entire  precept  of  the  Gospel 
of  Christ,  and .  yet  one :  of  which  a  real  Irish  Cromwel¬ 
lian  has  yet  to  learn  the  most  elementary  notion. 

The  following,  from  the  same  weighty  authority,  so 
beautifully  and  appositely  illustrates  the  relations  of  land¬ 
lord  and  tenant  in  Ireland,  that  I  deem  it  well  worthy 
of  quotation  . 

“If,”  wrote  he,  <‘,you  should  see  a  flock  of  pigeons  in 
a  field  of  corn,  and  if  (instead  of  each  picking  where  and 
what  it  liked,  taking  just  as  much  as  it  wanted,  and  no 
more)  you.  should  see  ninety-nine  of  them  gathering  all 
they  got: into,  a  heap,  reserving  nothing  for  themselves 
but  the  chaff  and  the  refuse ,  keeping  this  heap  for  ONE,  and 
that  the  weakest,  perhaps,  and  the  WORST  PIGEON  OF 
the  lot— sitting  and  looking  on  all  the  winter,  whilst 
this  one  was  devouring,- throwing  about,  and  wasting  it;  and 
if  a, pigeon  more  hardy  and  hungry  than  the  rest  touched 
a  grain  of  the  horde,  all  the  others  instantly  flying  at  him, 
and.  tearing  him  to  pieces, — if  you  should  see  this,  you 
would  see  nothing  more  than  what  is  every  day  practised 
and  established  among  men.  Among  men  you  see  ninety- 
and-nine  men  toiling  and  scraping  together  a  heap  of 
superfluity  for  one — getting  nothing  for  themselves  all  the 
.while,  but  a  little  of  the  coarsest  of  the  provisions  which 
their  own  labour  .produces  ;  whilst  the  one  for  whom  they 
toil  and  accumulate  is  oftentimes  the  worst  and  the 
feeblest  of  the  whole  set— a  child,  a  woman,  a  madman,  or 
a  fool ;  whilst  they  calmly  see  the,  whole  fruit  of  all  their 
labour  spent  and  spoiled  ;  and  if  one  of  them  take,  or  even 
touch  a  particle  of  it,  the  others  join  against  him  and 
hang  him  forthwith.”-]-  This  would  be  more  appropriate 

Is- 1  ■  (5r  pBHQfc  ,\  < 

.  . »  ‘  v  ,  »  .  •  .v 

*  Is.  lviii.  6,  7  t  “Economy  of  Ireland,”  c  i.  part  1. 


68 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


still  if  he  had  made  the  flock  990,  and  the  bad,  lazy,  idle, 
cormorant  birds  ten,  who  arrogated  to  themselves  the 
right  not  merely  to  live  on,  but  seize  and  squander  the 
hard-earned  gatherings  of  the  990,  all  of  whom  these 
ten  would  hang  or  turn  out  of  the  field  for  touching  the 
fruit  of  their  industry. 

The  same  author  (whose  work  forms  part  of  the  Cam¬ 
bridge  course)  ‘writes  as  follows  : — 

With  respect  to  the  encouragement  of  husbandry,  in 
this,  as  in  every  other  employment,  the  true  reward  of 
industry  is  in  the  price  and  sale  of  the  prqduce.  The 
exclusive  right  to  the  produce  is  the  only  incitement 
which  acts  constantly  and  universally — the  only  spring 
which  keeps  human  labour  in  motion.  All,  therefore, 
that  the  laws  can  do  is  to  secure  this  right  to  the  occupier 
of  the  ground ;  that  is,  to  constitute  such  a  system  of 
tenure,  that  the  full  and  entire  advantage  of  every  improve¬ 
ment  go  to  the  benefit  of  the  improver ;  that  every  man  ivorJc  for 
himself  and  not  for  another ;  and  that  no  one  share  in  the 
profit  who  does  not  assist  in  the  production.  By  the  occupier 
I  here  mean,  not  so  much  the  person  who  performs  the 
work,  as  him  who  procures  the  labour  and  directs  the 
management ;  and  I  consider  the  whole  profit  as  received 
by  the  occupier,  when  the  occupier  is  benefited  by  the 
whole  value  of  what  is  produced,  which  is  the  case  with 
the  tenant  who  pays  a  fixed  rent  for  the  use  of  land,  no 
less  than  with  the  proprietor  who  holds  it  as  his  own.  The 
one  has  the  same  interest  in  the  produce,  and  in  the  ad¬ 
vantage  of  every  improvement,  as  the  other.  Likewise 
the  proprietor,  though  he  grant  out  his- estate  to  farm, 
may  be  considered  as  the  occupier,  insomuch  as  he  regu¬ 
lates  the  occupation  by  the  choice,  superintendence,  and 
encouragement  of  his  tenants,  by  the  disposition  of  his 
lands,  by  erecting  buildings,  providing  accommodations,  by 
prescribing  conditions ,  or  supplying  implements  and  materials^. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


69 


of  improvement ;  and  is  entitled ,  by  the  rule  of  public  expe¬ 
diency  above  mentioned ,  to  receive ,  m  the  advance  of  his  rent ,  a 
s/iarg  0/  the  benefit  which  arises  even  from  the  increased  pro¬ 
duce  of  his  estate 

We  will  observe  that  Paley  founds  the  landlord’s  right 
to  raise  the  rent,  not,  like  some  of  our  Irish  landlords,  on 
the  fact  that  the  land  is  his,  and  that  he  “  may  do  what  he 
likes  with  his  own,”  but  on  the  fact  that  he  has  contributed 
to  increase  the  productiveness  of  the  soil  “  by  erecting 
buildings,  providing  accommodations,  by  prescribing 
conditions,  or  supplying  implements  and  materials  of 
improvement.”  A  fortiori ,  therefore,  the  griping  Irish 
landlord,  who  fulfils  none  of  these  conditions,  who  ex¬ 
pends  not  one  penny  on  improvements  or  inrplements, 
who  does  not,  even  indirectly  or  remotely,  assist  in  the 
production,  has  no  right  whatever,  agreeably  to  Paley’s 
principles,  to  claim  a  fraction  of  the  profit.  And  yet,  as 
we  all  well  know,  this  is  precisely  what  the  law  enables  him 
to  do. 

“  The  violation  of  this  fundamental  maxim  of  agrarian 
policy,  constitutes,”  continues  Paley,  “  the  chief  objection 
to  the  holding  of  lands.  The  inconveniency  to  the  public 
arises  not  so  much  from  the  inalienable  quality  of  lands 
thus  holden  in  perpetuity,  as  from  hence — that  proprietors 
of  this  description  seldom  contribute  much  either  of  attention 
or  expense  to  the  cultivation  of  their  estates,  yet  claim,  by  the 
rent,  a  share  in  the  profit  of  every  improvement  that  is  made 
upon  them.  This  complaint  tan  only  be  obviated  (mark  this, 
for  it  is  exactly  the  case  of  our  own  Irish  tenants)  by 
*  long  leases  AT  A  FIXED  rent,’  which  convey  a  large 
portion  of  the  interest  to  those  who  actually  conduct  the  culti¬ 
vation 

“  Long  leases  at  a  fixed  rent”  Such  would  be  Paley’s 
“  Landlord  and  Tenant  Bill.”  I  confess  I  would  interpret 
“  long”  by  “  renewable  for  ever,”  as  thus  alone  could  I 


70 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


recognize,  practically,  the  fundamental  truism  that  God 
meant  the  land  for  man,  not  for  21,  or  61,  or  99  years, 
but  until  the  angel  shall  have  come  to  sound  the  last 
trumpet,  summoning  the  living  and  the  dead  to  general 
judgment,  at  which  both  landlord  and  tenant  will  get 
a  lease  that  never  shall  or  can  be  broken. 

To  this  it  is  objected,  as  we  see  it  even  in  the  corres¬ 
pondence  of  the  Times'  Special  Commissioner,  that  such 
a  lease  would  be  equivalent  to  a  tenure  in  fee,  and  to 
which  I  reply :  “  Truly,  if  you  gave  the  land  to  the  tenant 
on  the  terms  on  which  it  was  originally  vested  in  the 
ancestors  of  the  present  proprietors,  and  is  still  held  by 
themselves — that  is,  for  nothing.  But  you  only  confuse 
things  by  confounding  names,  when  you  call  a  tenure  at  a 
rent  of  five,  or  six,  or  ten  per  cent,  interest  on  a  ten  or 
twenty  years’  purchase,  a  tenure  in  fee. 

But  what  if  it  really  were  a  tenure  in  fee  1  Who  is 
the  loser  1  No  one.  Not  the  landlord ;  for  he  is  supposed 
to  obtain  the  value  of  his  “  property”  up  to  the  last 
farthing,  according  to  state  valuation  !  Not  the  tenant- 
in-fee — now,  if  you  like  to  call  him  so,  “  a  peasant 
proprietor for  his  social  condition  is  raised,  his  pros¬ 
pects  are  brightened,  his  sense  of  independence  developed, 
his  interest  in  the  soil  enhanced,  while  his  disbursements 
remain  the  same.  Instead  of  paying  rent  to  the  “  land¬ 
lord,”  he  pays  it  to  the  state ;  or,  more  accurately,  he 
changes  landlords — a  petty  tyrant,  as  he  may  be,  whose 
selfishness,  and  avarice,  and  bigotry,  and  jealousy  of 
political  power,  rule  his  every  act — for  the  state,  the  vital 
interest  of  which  is  to  have  every  citizen,  .or  “  subject,” 
as  the  case  may  be,  contented  and  happy,  attached  to  the 
soil,  and  prepared  to  defend  it,  in  its  need,  with  the  last 
drop  of  his  blood. 

On  the  subject  of  Peasant  Proprietorship,  which  is 
pronounced  a  chimera  even  this  day  by  the  Conserva- 


i 


71 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 

tive  organs  of  English  opinion — in  fact,  is  declared  a 
synonyme  with  “  confiscation  ” — Mill  writes  as  follows  : — 
“  The  truly  insular  ignorance  of  her  (England’s) 
public  men  respecting  a  form  of  agricultural  economy 
which  predominates  in  nearly  every  other  civilized 
country,  makes  it  only  too  probable  that  she  will  choose 
the  worse  side  of  the  alternative — depopulation  or  peasant 
proprietary  to  some  extent.  Yet  there  are  germs  of  a 
tendency  to  the  formation  of  peasant  proprietors  on  Irish 
soil,  which  require  only  the  aid  of  a  friendly  legislator 
to  foster  them  ;  as  is  shown  in  the  following  extract  from 
a  private  communication  by  my  eminent  and  valued 
friend  Professor  Cairnes.”* 

The  extract  is  interesting,  but  not  very  material. 

Again,  comparing  Ireland  with  India,  he  writes  : — 

“  The  case  of  Ireland  is  similar  to  that  of  India.  In 
India,  though  great  errors  have  been  from  time  to  time 
committed,  no  one  ever  proposed,  under  the  name  of 
agricultural  improvement,  to  eject  the  ryots  or  peasant 
farmers  from  their  possession.  The  improvement  that 
has  been  looked  for  has  been  through  making  their  tenure 
more  secure  to  them,  and  the  sole  difference  of  opinion 
is  between  those  who  contend  for  perpetuity  and  those 
who  think  that  long  leases  will  suffice.  The  same  ques¬ 
tion  exists  as  to  Ireland ;  and  it  would  be  idle  to  deny, 
under  such  landlords  as  are  sometimes  to  be  found,  do 
effect  wonders,  even  in  Ireland.  But  then  there  must 
be  leases  at  a  low  rent.  ...  A  perpetuity  is  a  stronger 
stimulus  to  an  improvement  than  a  long  lease.  .  .  Besides, 
while  perpetual  tenure  is  the  general  rule  of  landed  pro¬ 
perty,  as  it  is  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  a  tenure  for 
a  limited  period,  however  long,  is  sure  to  be  regarded  as 
something  of  inferior  consideration  and  dignity,  and 


*  B.  II,  c.  x.  pp.  205-6, 


I 


I 


72  THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

inspires  less  of  ardor  tohbtain  it,  and  of  attachment  when 
obtained.’1* 

And  then  he  points  out  the  impolicy  and  cruelty  of 
leaving  “  rent  paid  by  labourers,  who  farm  not  for  profit 
but  for  bread,”  to  “  competition.” 

Here  even  a  lease  did  not  save  the  occupier. 

Let  the  insane  cry,  then,  of  confiscation  cease. 
By  security  of  tenure  nothing  is  confiscated  except 
the  evil  power  of  doing  wrong — a  hideous  power 
barbarously  exercised — the  power  of  a  few  to  sweep 
millions  of  God’s  human  ransomed  creatures  off  the 
face  of  the  earth,  for,  in  the  words  of  the  great  Bishop  of 
Orleans,  “a  good  reason,  a  bad  reason,  or  no  reason 
at  all  ” — nay,  not  unfrequently,  as  in  this  very  spot, 
the  exercise  of  the  noblest  of  virtues,  conscientious 
attachment  to  religious  faith,  and,  in  the  case  of  Mrs. 
Lavelle,  by  Sir  Roger  Palmer,  for  presuming  to  entertain 
the  natural  feelings  of  a  lone  and  bereaved  parent. 

Let  us  now  take  a  cursory  view  of  the  land  tenure  of 
other  countries,  ancient  and  modern,  contrasting  the 
wise  and  large-souled  policy  of  all,  with  the  narrow, 
selfish,  and  destructive  land  legislation  for  Ireland. 


*Id.,  Ib. 


73 


.  SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


CHAPTER  III. 

LAND  TENURE  THROUGHOUT  EUROPE. 


“ On  the  continent,  though  there  are  some  dissentients  from  the  prevailing 
opinion,  the  benefit  of  having  a  numerous  proprietary  population  exists  in  the 
minds  of  most  people  in  the  form  of  an  axiom.”— Mill’s  Polit.  Econ .,  b.  2,  c.  v. 


PRUSSIA. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  agrarian  peaceful  revolu¬ 
tions  effected  in  Europe  within  the  present  century,  was 
that  wrought  by  the  patriotism  and  energy  of  Stein  and 
Hardenberg  in  Prussia,  sixty  years  ago.  By  a  succession 
of  determined  strokes  they  broke  down  the  citadel  of 
feudal  despotism,  which,  in  the  hour  of  need,  was  dis¬ 
covered  to  be  utterly  worthless  for  the  country’s  honor 
and  protection.  The  feudal  lords  were  found  too  few 
and  too  weak  to  avert  invasion,  plunder,  overwhelming 
war  contributions,  and  national  calamity  and  disgrace  ; 
while  the  peasants,  having  no  stake  in  the  country  for 
which  to  stand  and  battle,  showed  but  faint  front  to  the 
ambitious  foe,  and  thus  between  them  the  country  came 
to  ruin  and  the  crown  to  shame. 

In  1807  Prussia  lay  bleeding  and  helpless  at  the  feet  of 
France.  The  campaign  of  Friedland  sounded  almost  her 
death-knell  as  a  great  European  power.  She  had  to  cede 
to  her  conqueror,  for  his  several  prot6g6s  and  nominees, 
nearly  half  her  territory,  with  4,236,000  souls  out  of  a 
total  population  of  9,000,000,  besides  paying  exactions, 
in  the  shape  of  a  war-tax,  to  the  amount  of  £27,000,000, 


74 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


while  her  revenue  did  not  exceed  £3,000,000  a-year. 
To  this  pitiful  plight  had  she  been  brought  by  feudality. 
Stein  saw  the  cause,  and  he  resolved  that  it  should  be 
made  to  cease.  By  a  decree  of  the  9th  October,  1807 — 
four  days  after  his  accession  to  the  prime-ministry — he 
issued  a  royal  ordinance,  by  which,  in  the  words  of  Sir 
Archibald  Alison,  “the  peasants  and  burghers  obtained 
the  right,  hitherto  confined  to  the  nobles,  of  acquiring 
and  holding  landed  property,  while  they,  in  their  turn, 
were  permitted,  without  losing  caste,  to  engage  in  the 
pursuits  of  commerce  and  industry.  Landholders 
were  allowed,  under  the  reservation  of  the  rights 
of  their  creditors,  to  separate  their  estates  into  distinct 
parcels  and  alienate  them  to  different  persons  ;  ”  and  as 
a  result  of  this  change  he  tells  us  that  “  Prussia,  amidst 
the  humiliation  of  unprecedented  disasters,  and  when 
groaning  under  the  weight  of  foreign  chains,  was  silently 
relaxing  the  fetters  of  the  feudal  system,  and  laying  the 
foundation,  in  a  cautious  and  guiltless  reformation  of  ex¬ 
perienced  grievances,  for  the  future  erection  of  those 
really  free  institutions  which  can  never  be  on  any  other 
basis  than  those  of  justice,  order,  and  religion.”*  And 

those  “  future  free  institutions  ”  are  described  in  an  ad- 

♦ 

mirable  pamphlet  by  Mr.  J ohn  Levy,  Barrister,  consisting 
of  a  series  of  letters  to  the  Irish  Times  on  the  Prussian 
system,  in  the  following  words  : — 

“  Every  man  in  Prussia  now  has  a  vote,  every  man  in 
it  is  armed,  and  every  man  who  occupies  land  is  the 
owner  of  it ;  but  the  Irish  people  don’t  want  the  gun  if 
they  get  the  vote  ”  (and  the  land).f 

Hardenberg  improved  on  Stein,  and,  in  1815,  perfected 
the  Prussian  land  code  as  it  now  stands,  and  as  is  ex¬ 
plained  in  the  following  paragraph  by  Mr.  Levy  : — 


*  “  Hist.  Europe,”  vol.  xi.,  p.  244-5.  +  P.  4. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


75 


“  I  will  again  explain  how  the  land  laws  of  Prussia 
enable  the  landholder  to  become  the  owner  of  his  land, 
and  how  small  estates  are  created  and  still  preserved, 
which,  in  every  country  where  they  exist,  are  the  true 
basis  of  that  moral  and  legitimate  power  which  the  people 
ought  to  possess,  and  which,  beyond  all  doubt,  gave  nerve 
and  prowess  to  the  Prussian  soldier  in  the  late  war. 
When  a  farm  or  estate  is  to  be  sold  in  Prussia,  the  vendor 
gives  notice  to  the  government  officer  of  the  circle,  who 
is  called  an  aufseher ,  and  whose  duty  it  is  to  survey  and 
value  farms  or  estates  about  to  be  sold.  This  official, 
who  is  paid  by  the  government,  makes  a  map  of  the 
lands.  That  map  is  hung  up  in  the  office  of  the  circle, 
and  the  value  and  description  of  the  property  are  regis¬ 
tered  there,  and  there  purchasers  always  go  to  inquire. 
When  a  purchaser  finds  what  suits  him,  and  that  he  is 
approved  of  by  the  government  officer,  he  is  merely 
asked  to  pay  one-twentieth  of  the  purchase-money  to 
that  official.  The  transaction  is  then  recorded  in  the 
books  of  the  circle,  and  a  transcript  of  it  sent  to  the 
Statts  Kanzallie,  or  chancery  at  Berlin;  a  kind  of  land  deben¬ 
ture  is  then  issued,  bearing  on  the  face  of  it  the  instal¬ 
ments  to  be  paid,  with  the  interest  calculated  up  to  the 
payment  of  the  last  instalment ;  it  then  receives  the 
government  seal,  the  government  being  liable  to  the 
holder  for  the  payment  of  all  future  instalments,  until  the 
whole  is  paid  off ;  and  thus  the  celebrated  land  zettels,  or 
land  notes,  of  Prussia  are  created,  and  are  regarded  as 
the  best  public  securities  in  Europe,  being  transferable 
from  hand  to  hand.  The  payment  of  the  instalments 
and  interest  is  managed  in  this  way  : — When  the  note  or 
debenture  comes  back  from  the  Statts  Kanzallie,  it  is 
handed  to  vendor  instead  of  bank  notes,  and  if  he  wants 
to  turn  it  into  cash  he  has  nothing  to  do  but  go  to 
next  geldivechsler,  or  money  broker,  where  he  can  sell  it 


76 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


at  a  premium.  The  purchaser,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
bound  to  pay  the  instalments  and  interest  to  the  govern¬ 
ment  officer  of  the  circle  where  the  property  is  situate  and 
the  purchase  registered ;  and,  at  the  end  of  twenty  years, 
the  purchaser  becomes  the  owner  in  fee  of  the  property 
thus  purchased,  so  that  almost  every  landholder  in 
Prussia  is  the  owner  of  a  small  estate.  It  is  the  custom 
of  the  proprietor,  when  he  pays  the  last  instalment,  to 
have  a  grand  festival  called  a  landfestug ,  in  order  to  com¬ 
memorate  the  happy  event ;  and  if  a  stranger  is  passing 
through  a  town  or  village  where  these  rural  festivities 
are  going  on,  he  is  sure  to  be  invited.”* 

Thus  can  every  Prussian  landholder  really  call  his  “  bit 
of  land”  his  own.  No  avaricious  eye  can  be  successfully 
cast  upon  it.  No  heartless  “  master”  or  agent  can  seize 
it  “at  will.”  And  hence  did  the  Prussian  fight  and 
conquer,  and  reverse  Friedland  in  the  field  of  Sadowa. 

Little  wonder  that  Mr.  Laing,  in  his  “  Notes  of  a  Tra¬ 
veller,”  should  pronounce  this  change  “the  great  and 
redeeming  glory  of  the  reign  of  Frederic  William  III.  .  .  . 
by  which  Prussia  was  at  once  covered  with  a  body  of 
small  proprietors,  instead  of  being  held  by  a  small  privi¬ 
leged  class  of  nobility.”  “  This  revolution,”  says  he,  “  in 
the  state  property  was  almost  as  great  as  that  which  had 
taken  place  in  France,  and  it  is  pregnant  with  the  same 
results  and  tendencies.  It  gave  aomfort,  well-being,  property, 
to  a  population  of  serfs.  It  emancipated  them  from  local 
oppression ,  raised  their  moral  and  physical  condition,  gave 
them  a  political,  although  as  yet  unacknowledged, 
existence,  as  the  most  important  constituent  element 
of  the  social  body.”+  How  appropriate  to  the  case 
of  Ireland — with  her  “  small  privileged  class,”  her  de¬ 
graded  serfs,  and  her  “  local  oppression.”  Is  there  no 


*  lb.  pp.  12,  13.  t  “Notes  of  a  Traveller,”  pp.  83,  85. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


77 


Stein  or  Hardenberg  in  this  country  to-day  to  take 
pattern  by  the  great  Prussian  patriots  of  sixty  years  ago, 
or  is  the  country  and  the  empire  to  be  yet  longer  sacri¬ 
ficed  to  the  pride  and  pomp  and  tyranny  of  a  few  ? 

Another  authority,  Lord  Brougham,  ever  the  bitter  foe 
of  Ireland,  and  no  enemy  of  Irish  landlords,  gives  his 
estimate  of  this  great  Prussian  revolution  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  words  : — “  It  is  remarkable  that  the  nobles,  who  had, 
of  course,  complained  much  of  so  violent  an  interference 
with  their  property,  felt  soon  the  benefits  resulting  from 
the  new  arrangement,  and  especially  in  the  improvement 
which  it  effected  in  the  condition  of  their  tenants,  that 
they  represented  it  as  advancing  them  a  century  .... 
the  rights  of  the  lord  were  far  more  burthensome  to  the 
vassal  than  beneficial  to  himself”  (the  lord).*  And, 
equally,  in  reference  to  the  French  Revolution  did  he 
declare  that  “  its  price  was  assuredly  heavy,  but  not  too 
heavy  compared  with  the  blessings  it  had  purchased.”t 
And  is  it  not  notorious  that  the  grand  benefit  resulting 
from  that  terrible  convulsion  is  the  fundamental  change 
which  it  effected  in  the  French  tenure  of  land  'l  True, 
of  the  continental  countries,  France  alone  refused  towards  * 
the  close  of  the  last  century  to  let  go  its  feudal  hold  on 
the  soil;  The  consequence  was — Revolution  and  Libera¬ 
tion  of  the  Soil.  Mr.  G-.  Poulett  Scrope  informs  us  that 
— “  In  almost  every  other  state  of  Europe  the  peasant- 
occupier  was,  by  the  decree  of  the  sovereign,  released 
from  his  servile  dependence  on  the  will  of  the  legal  lord 
of  the  soil,  and  made  the  owner  of  his  farm  at  a  fixed  quit 
rent”%  Thus  is  England  behind  every  other  country  in 
Europe  in  her  retention  of  that  degrading  feudalism  of 
land-tenure,  which,  if  not  speedily  exploded,  will  inevi¬ 
tably  hasten  her  downfall.  The  result  of  this  “  release” 

*  “Political  Philosophy,”  vol.  ii. ,  p.  526. 

t  “  His.  Sketches,”  &c.,  p.  10.  £  “Irish  Relief  Measures,”  1848. 


78 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


in  Prussia  we  have  sufficiently  seen  ;  let  me  merely  add 
the  testimony  of  Mr.  M‘Greggor,  who  declares,  that  “in 
the  ten  years  subsequent  to  her  release  Prussia  made 
more  .progress  than  in  the  previous  century.”*  While 
Alison  supplies  us  with  the  following  testimony  on  the 
authority  of  Malte  Brun,  Dupin,  &c.  : — “The  main 
strength  of  Prussia,  however,  lies  in  its  agriculture  ;  and 
it  is  in  the  patriotic  spirit  and  indomitable  courage  of 
those  engaged  in  it  that  the  government  has  found  in 
every  age  the  surest  bulwark  against  foreign  aggression. 

“  So  rapid  has  been  the  increase  of  sheep  of  late  years 
in  Prussia,  that  their  number,  which  in  181 G  amounted 
only  to  8,261,400,  had  risen  in  1825  to  14,150,000 — that, 
is,  nearly  doubled ;  and  the  most  decided  proof  of  the 
general  increase  of  rural  produce  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact,  that,  though  population  in  t  Prussia  is  now  advanc¬ 
ing  more  rapidly  than  any  in  Europe,  and  so  as  to  double, 
if  the  present  progress  should  continue,  in  twenty-six 
years,  yet  no  importation  of  foreign  grain  is  required. 
Subsistence,  under  the  influence  of  increased  production, 
so  far  from  becoming  scarce,  is  constantly  declining  in 
price,  and  the  augmented  comforts  and  wants  of  a  pros¬ 
perous  people  are  amply  provided  for  by  the  agricultural 
portion  of  the  community.”t  No  wonder.  For,  while  in 
Ireland  the  area  of  grass  land  is  over  10,000,000  acres, 
apart  from  the  5,000,000  waste,  and  the  arable  only 
about  5,500,000,  out  of  a  total  area  of  over  20,808,1274 
in  Prussia  there  were,  when  Alison  wrote,  47,295,716 
arpents  under  tillage,  to  16,972,714  in  pasture,  and 
14,326,429  in  meadow — double'  as  much  given  to  grass 
in  Ireland  as  to  tillage  •;  not  even  so  much  given  to  grass 
as  to  tillage  in  Prussia :  nearly  two-thirds  of  all  the  Prus- 

*  “  Commercial  tariffs,  German  States,”  i.  p.  97. 

f  “Hist.  Europe,”  v.  10,  p.  5. 

£  Report  of  Census  Commissioners  of  1841.  This  includes 
6, 295,735  “waste,”  and  630,825  under  water. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


79 


sian  soil  devoted  to  agriculture ;  little  over  one-fourth  of 
that  of  Ireland. 

Prussia  is  striding  in  the  paths  of  progress  and  mate¬ 
rial  happiness — Ireland  is  retrograding  day  after  day. 
Contemplating  these  wonderful  results  of  the  Prussian 
peasant  proprietorship,  the  impartial  student  must  feel 
astounded  at  that  “  moral  obliquity  of  vision”  which  can 
see  nothing,  even  in  a  remote  approach  to  it  in  Ireland, 
but  “  confiscation”  and  communism.  Prussia  untied  her 
soil,  wrested  it  from  the  idle  grasp  of  a  favored  few, 
giving  them  a  full  equivalent  in  another  shape,  and  con¬ 
ferred  it  on  the  many.  The  natural  result  soon  made 
itself  felt,  and  Prussia  ranks  this  day  the  rival  of  France, 
the  greatest  power  in  Europe.  It  was  the  work  of  “  the 
magic  of  property.”  “  The  magic  of  property,”  said 
Arthur  Young,  “  turns  sand  into  gold.  Give  a  man  the 
secure  possession  of  a  bleak  rock,  and  he  will  turn  it  into 
a  garden ;  give  him  a  nine  years’  lease  of  a  garden,  and 
he  will  turn  it  into  a  desert.” 

The  Prussian  sandy  plains  were  little  better  than  a 
desert  in  the  days  of  Frederick  the  Great.  The  follow¬ 
ing  sketch. from  Mr.  Kay  tells  us  what  they  are  to-day, 
under  the  new  system  of  j)easant  proprietorship  : — 

u  Reichensperger,  himself  an  inhabitant  of  Prussia, 
where  the  land  is  most  subdivided,  has  published  a  long 
and  very  elaborate  work,  to  show  the  admirable  conse¬ 
quences  of  a  system  of  freehold  in  land.  He  expresses 
a.  very  decided  opinion  that,  not  only  are  the  gross  pro¬ 
ducts  of  any  given  number  of  acres,  held  and  cultivated 
by  small  and  peasant  proprietors,  greater  than  the  gross 
products  of  an  equal  number  of  acres,  held  by  a  few 
great  proprietors  and  cultivated  by  tenant  farmers,  but 
that  the  net  products  of  the  former,  after  deducting  all 
the  expenses  of  cultivation,  are  also  greater  than  the  net 
products  of  the  latter.  .  .  .  He  mentions  one  fact  which 


80 


THE  IRISH  LANDLOLD 


seems  to  prove  that  the  fertility  of  the  land  in  countries 
where  the  properties  are  small  must  be  rapidly  increas¬ 
ing.  He  says  that  the  price  of  land  which  is  divided 
into  small  properties  in  the  Prussian  Rhine  provinces  is 
much  higher,  and  has  been  rising  much  more  rapidly, 
than  the  price  of  land  on  the  great  estates.  He  and  Pro¬ 
fessor  Pau  both  say  that  this  rise  in  the  price  of  small 
estates  would  have  ruined  the  more  recent  purchasers, 
unless  the  productiveness  of  small  estates  had  increased, 
at  least  in  the  same  proportion.  And  as  the  small 
proprietors  have  been  becoming  gradually  more  and  more 
prosperous  ...  he  argues  .  .  .  that  this  would  seem  to 
show  that  not  only  the  gross  profits  of  the  small  estates, 
but  the  net  profits  also,  have  been  gradually  increasing, 
and  that  the  net  profits  of  land,  when  farmed  by  small 
proprietors,  are  greater  than  the  net  profits  per  acre  of 
land  when  farmed  by  a  great  proprietor.  .  .  .  Albrecht 
Thaer,  another  celebrated  German  writer  on  the  different 
systems  of  agriculture,  in  one  of  his  later  works,  ‘  Prin¬ 
ciples  of  Pational  Agriculture,’  expresses  his  decided 
conviction  that  the  net  produce  of  land  is  greater  when 

farmed  by  small  proprietors  or  their  tenants . This 

opinion  of  Thaer  is  the  more  remarkable,  as  during  the 
early  part  of  his  life  he  was  very  strongly  in  favor  of 
the  English  systems  of  great  estates  and  great  farms.”* 
What  inference  are  we  to  draw  from  this  mass  of  an- 
thority,  speaking,1  as  it  does,  from  ocular  demonstration, 
positive  information,  and  long  experience  1  Why,  that  the 
land-system  embracing  security  of  tenure,  either  by  fee 
or  freehold  in  perpetuity,  moderate  farms,  minute  culti¬ 
vation,  and  reasonable  rents,  is  that  which  Nature  in¬ 
tended  for  man,  and  to  which,  accordingly,  man  is  now 
universally  tending. 


*  Quoted  b  Mi  ibi  l.,  c.  vii. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


81 


CHAPTER  IY. 

BELGIUM  AND  THE  NETHERLANDS. 

If  we  pass  from  Prussia  to  Belgium,  we  find  a  rural 
prosperity  and  independence  not  less  striking  than  in  the 
larger  state.  Fixity  of  tenure  and  small  farms  of  from  five 
to  ten  acres  form  the  rule ;  and  we  have  it  on  the  authority 
of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  that  “  no  country  in 
Europe  provides  from  its  soil  so  great  a  quantity  of  sus¬ 
tenance,  not  only  for  its  inhabitants,  but  so  large  a 
surplus  of  food  for  exportation,  and  such  valuable  com¬ 
modities  to  exchange  for  articles  of  foreign  growth,  as 
Flanders.”*  Yet  the  same  authority  assures  us  that — 
“  the  land  of  Flanders  was  not  naturally  fertile.  On 
the  contrary  .  .  .  where  cultivation  has  not  been  ex¬ 
tended,  the  soil  produces  nothing  but  heath  and  fir.”f 
Still  it  is  for  its  area  the  most  densely  inhabited  country 
on  the  globe,  though,  from  its  unhealthiness,  it  has  been 
called  by  Professor  McCulloch,  “  the  graveyard  of 
Europe.”  How  reconcile  these  apparently  contradictory 
phenomena — a  sterile  soil,  an  insalubrious  climate,  a 
flourishing  agriculture,  and  a  teeming  population  'l  The 
Abb6  Mann  solves  the  question  in  a  few  words.  “  The 
original  soil,”  says  he,  “  was  pure  sand,  and  its  present 
state  of  fertility  is  owing  to  the  great  number  of  its  in¬ 
dustrious  inhabitants,  who  cultivate  a  few  acres  round  their 
dwellings,  of  which ,  for  the  most  'part ,  they  are  proprietors.” % 

*  Quoted  by  Sadleir,  “  Ireland  and  its  Evils,”  &c.,  p.  117. 

t  Ibid. 

X  Communications  to  the  Board  of  Agriculture,  vol.  i.  p.  238. 
Apud  Sadleir,  p.  121. 

F 


82 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


There,  then,  is  the  secret.  Set  a  few  grinding,  heartless, 
alien,  despot  landlords  over  these  “  industrious”  Flemings, 
reduce  their  condition  to  that  wretched  state  of  depen¬ 
dency — tenancy  at  will — of  the  rack-rented  Irish  peasant, 
and  then  see  how  soon  the  land  reasserts  its  nature,  and 
reverts  to  its  state  of  original  barrenness. 

Mr.  Sadleir  also  quotes  Baron  Poederle  as  “  attribut¬ 
ing  the  great  fertility  of  this  cultivated  district  to  its 
vast  population.”  And  he  adds  himself :  “1  must  fur¬ 
ther  remark  that  this  system  of  minute  cultivation  is 
not  the  result  of  accident,  as  is  often  alleged  in  reference 
to  Ireland,  but  of  deliberate  preference  and  choice.  It 
has  been  the  principle  of  Belgic  legislation  to  encourage 
it.  The  government ,  which  has  so  much  at  heart  all  the 
minutest  interests  of  agriculture,* * * §  has  ‘  passed  ordinan¬ 
ces  in  some  provinces  for  restraining  the  extent  of  farms, 
and  prescribing  a  division  of  those  of  too  great  extent.’t 
‘The  major  part  of  the  farms  in  ten  districts  of  Waes, 
which  comprehends  an  extensive  tract  of  Flanders,  con¬ 
sist  only  of  six  or  seven  boniers,  and  many  only  of  three 
or  four.’J  And  Abbe  Mann  tells  us  ‘  the  bonier  may  be 
reckoned  three  English  acres.’  ‘The  farms,’  he  says, 

‘  being  so  small,  few  horses  are  kept  in  the  land  of  Waes ; 
the  ground  is  chiefly  worked  with  the  spade  and  hoe.  All 
these  contribute  together  to  give  a  richness  and  fertility 
to  the  soil  of  this  tract  which  surpasses  almost  what  can 
be  imagined.  No  sjoot  lies  uncultivated.  Fallow  ground 
is  unknown.’” § 

Mr.  Radcliff  is  equally  eulogistic  of  this  Flemish  agri. 
culture,  which  he  pronounces  as  “of  merited  celebrity, 
obviously  beautiful  to  the  eye  in  the  garden-like  appear 
ance  of  its  cultivation.” ||  And  as  a  consequence  of  this 

*  Radcliff s  “Report  on  Agriculture  of  Flanders,”  p.  G6. 

t  Ibid.,  and  Abbe  Maun  commun.,  ibid. 

t  Baron  Poederle  communications,  ibid. 

§  Ibid.  ||  Ibid. 


SINGE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


83 


minute  and  careful  cultivation,  ‘the  population  is  no  less 
numerous  than  comfortable.  “There  are,”  says  he, 
“  461,659  souls  upon  302,235  hectares,  which  are  equal  to 
746,251  English  acres,  being  about  five  souls  to  eight 
English  acres.  But  the  population  is  much  more  dense 
in  other  districts — in  that  of  Bruges  alone  at  the  rate 
of  three  souls  to  four  acres,  and  in  that  of  Courtenay,  of 
one  to  an  English  acre.”  And  he  adds,  “  Notwithstanding 
this ,  one-third  of  the  produce  of  the  land  is  annually 
exported .”  In  Ireland  we  have  to-day  only  five  millions 
and  a-half  to  20,808,271  acres,  or  almost  only  one  to 
every  four  acres,  though,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Sadleir 
“  probably  the  richest  soil  of  any  country  in  the  world.”* 
Mr.  Moreau  de  Jormesf  gives  the  following  statistical 
table,  illustrative  of  this  important  fact,  and  showing  the 
comparative  productiveness  of  England,  Scotland,  and 
Ireland  : — 


England. 

Scotland. 

Ireland. 

Wheat, 

18 

16 

20 

Rye, 

10 

12 

32 

Barley, 

21 

12 

21 

Oats, 

16 

16 

16 

But  long  before  was  the  same  testimony  of  Ireland’s  fer¬ 
tility  furnished  at  even  hostile  hands.  Sir  John  Davis 
often  recurred  to  the  theme ;  and  Spenser  could  not  re¬ 
frain  from  the  following  acknowledgment :  “  For  sure  it  is 
a  most  beautiful  and  sweet  country  as  any  under  heaven , 
being  stored  throughout  with  many  goodly  rivers,  re¬ 
plenished  with  all  sorts  of  fish  most  abundantly,  sprinkled 

4  * '  ,  '  I 

*  “  Ireland  and  its  Evils.” 

t  “  Statistique  de  la  Grand  Bretagne.” — Quoted  by  Sir  Robert 
Kane  in  his  “  Industrial  Resources  of  Ireland.” 


84 


i 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

with  many  sweet  is  lands,  and  goodly  lakes,  like  little 
inland  seas,  that  will  carry  our  (sic)  ships  upon  their 
waters  so  commodiously,  as,  if  some  princes  in  the  world 
had  them  they  would  soon  hope  to  be  lords  of  all  the 
seas,  and,  ere  long,  of  all  the  world;  also  full  of  very 
good  ports  and  havens,  opening  upon  England,  as  invit¬ 
ing  us  to  come  to  them  to  see  what  excellent  commodi¬ 
ties  that  country  can  afford ;  besides  the  soil  itself  most 
fertile,  fit  to  yield  all  kinds  of  fruit  that  may  be  com¬ 
mitted  thereto;  and,  lastly,  the  heavens  most  mild  and 
temperate.”*  Yet  at  the  time  these  very  words  were 
written,  the  Irish  race  was,  as  it  is  to-day,  starving  in  its 
fertile  native  land,  and  that  from  the  operation  of  the 
verycause  that  engenders  poverty  and  its  natural  daughter, 
crime,  to-day — imperial  and  territorial  oppression. 

Passing  by  the  former,  of  which  the  unworthy  author 
of  the  “  Faery  Queen”  was  himself,  to  the  disgrace  of  his 
otherwise  famous  memory,  a  most  zealous  apostle,  he 
supplies  us  with  an  idea  of  the  latter,  in  the  following 
sketch  : — “  There  is  one  general  inconvenience  which 
reigneth  almost  throughout  Ireland  ;  that  is,  the  lords  of 
lands  and  freeholders  do  not  let  out  their  land  in  farm, 
or  for  term  of  years  to  their  tenants,  but  only  from  year 
to  year,  and  some  during  pleasure.”  And,  to  show  how 
the  landlords  of  the  present  day  “  shame  not  their  sires,” 
let  us  quote  the  objection  of  Eudoxius,  a  supposed  pro¬ 
prietor,  who  asks  :  “  But  what  evil  cometh  hereby  to  the 
commonwealth,  or  what  reason  is  it  that  any  landlord 
should  not  set,  nor  any  tenant  take  his  land  as  he  listeth  V 
Ireneus :  “  Many  the  evils  that  come  hereby  are  great,  for 
by  this  means  both  the  landlord  tliinketh  that  he  hath  his 
tenant  more  at  command,  &c.  .  .  .  and  this  inconve¬ 
nience  may  be  reason  enough  to  ground  any  ordinance 


*  “State  of  Ireland,”  p.  484.  Routledge,  London,  1S44. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


85 


for  the  good  of  the  commonwealth,  against  the  private 
behoof  or  will  of  any  landlord  that  shall  refuse  to  grant 
any  such  terms  or  estate  unto  his  tenant  as  may  tend  to 
the  good  of  the  whole  realm.”  A  patent  truism,  acted 
on  almost  everywhere  else,  except  within  the  four  corners 
of  the  British  isles.  But  we  anticipate. 

Reverting  to  the  agricultural  condition  of  the  Nether¬ 
lands,  Baron  Poederloe  informs  us  that  “  the  increase  of 
population,  since  the  peace  of  1749,  has  greatly  diminished 
the  size  of  farms,  as  well  in  Hainault,  as  elsewhere.  The 
proprietors,  in  dividing  their  estates,  have  almost  doubled 
their  value,  and  Brabant  has  no  occasion  for  ordinances 
to  that  effect.  The  states  of  the  province,  however, 
petitioned  that  the  size  of  farms  should  be  settled  ! !  !”* 
How  daring  of  these  states  !  Fancy  the  people  of  Mayo, 
of  Connaught,  of  all  the  four  provinces  of  Ireland,  thus 
presuming  to  “  dictate”  to  the  “  master”  how  he  was  to 
apportion  out  his  estate !  thus  questioning  his  golden 
maxim,  that  “  a  man  may  do  what  he  likes  with  his 
own !” 

In  this  same  Brabant  “  there  is  hardly  any  such  thing 
as  tenants,  each  farmer  is  a  proprietor.”!  “  In  the  Pays 
de  Waes  they  cultivate  a  few  acres  round  their  dwellings, 
of  which  they  are,  for  the  most  part,  the  proprietors.”! 
“  Many  there  are,”  says  Young,  “  who  own  the  land 
they  occupy.  An  incredible  spirit  of  industry  is  mani¬ 
fested.  Whoever  is  able  purchases  a  nook  where  he 
can,  where  sua  regna  videns  miratur,  and  falls  in  love 
with  independence.”  Yet  this  minuteness  of  territorial 
property  is  not  so  productive  of  “surplus”  population 
as  Malthusian  misanthropes  would  apprehend ;  for,  “  con¬ 
sidering  the  population  of  Flanders,  the  army  receives 


*  Communications,  &c.,  quoted  by  Sadleir,  p.  124. 
t  Abbe  Mann,  Ibid.  £  Ibid. 


86 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


from  it  very  few  mercenaries.  Even  the  servantry,  in 
most  Flemish  towns,  is  drawn  from  other  countries. 
Yet,  “  so  great  is  everywhere  the  plenty,  that,  after  what 
is  necessary  for  home  consumption,  you  can  scarcely 
name  an  article  that  is  not  exported,  even  raw  flax, 
though  linens  here  are  the  principal  manufacture.”* 
“  In  Flanders,”  writes  Mr.  Radcliff,  “the  gentlemen  are 
all  farmers,  but  the  farmers  don’t  aspire  to  be  gentle¬ 
men,  and  their  servants  feel  the  benefit . Each 

day  laborer  has,  in  most  cases,  a  small  quantity  of 
land,  from  a  rood  to  half  an  acre,  for  his  own  culti¬ 
vation.  .  .  .  .•  If  the  laborer  is  comfortable  in  point  of 

apparel,  the  farmer  is  still  more  so.  .  .  .  .  The  Flemish 
farmer  seldom  amasses  riches,  but  is  rarely  afflicted  with 
poverty,  .  w  .  .  has  always  something  to  command 
beyond  his  regular  disbursements.”!  I  know  of  estates 
in  the  county  of  Mayo,  where  the  subletting  of  a  perch 
to  a  day  laborer  entailed  inevitable  eviction.  The 
wretched  human  form  in-  rags  must  try  and  make  that 
daily  10cZ.  or  Is.  go  as  far  as  it  can  on  himself,  his  wife* 
and  his  children.  No  wonder,  then,  that  a  Dublin 
gentleman,  who  lately  called  on  me  to  obtain  evidence 
in  the  famous  case,  “  M‘Culloch  v.  Knox”  of  the 
Irish  Times ,  declared  he  never  witnessed  such  misery  as 
appeared  in  the  features  and  habiliments  of  the  people 

To  proceed  :  Mr.  ’Joseph  Kay,  who  had  been  deputed 
by  the  University  of  Cambridge  to  visit  all  Europe,  and 
examine,  and  authentically  report  upon  the  social  con¬ 
dition  of  the  several  classes  of  society  in  each  country 
of  the  continent,  and  who  paid  special  attention  to  the 
subject  of  agriculture  and  tenure  of  land,  summarizes  his 
conclusions  as  follows: — “Wheresoever  the  ancient. 

*  “Annals  of  Agriculture,”  v.  i.,  p.  227-2S0. 

t  “  Report  on  the  Agriculture  of  Flanders,”  quoted  by  Sadleir, 
p.  127. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


87 


feudal  laws  had  ceased  to  rule  real  property,  and  to 
exclude  the  masses  of  the  rural  class  from  the  direct 
possession  of  the  soil,  there,  especially  where  the  peasant 
is  personally,  and  on  his  own  account,  interested  in 
developing  by  labor  the  resources  of  the  land,  agriculture 
is  flourishing,  and  the  laboring  classes  are  commodiously 
lodged,  clad,  and  fed — a  state  of  things  resulting  in  the 
progress  of  well-being,  riches,  instruction,  and  morality 
for  the  entire  country.”* 

And  this  was  no  hasty  conclusion,  drawn  from  the 
observations  of  an  autumn  excursion,  or  the  hasty  per¬ 
usal  of  some  reviews,  but  from  personal  inspection,  and 
after  a  tour  of  eight  years  through  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  Prussia,  Saxony,  Wurtemberg,  Bavaria,  Han¬ 
over,  Oldenberg,  Austria,  France,  Belgium,  and  Holland. 
“  I  undertook,”  said  he,  “  the  greater  part  of  these 
journeys  in  order  to  examine  the  comparative  conditions 
of  the  peasants  and  operatives  in  these  several  countries, 
the  different  modes  of  legislating  for  them,  and  the 
effects  of  these  different  modes  of  legislation  upon  their 
character,  habits,  and  social  condition.”!  He  illustrates 
the  truth  at  which  he  had  arrived  by  the  contrast  pre¬ 
sented  by  the  respective  conditions  of  the  Bohemian  and 
the  Saxon.  The  one  is  a  beggar,  coatless,  shoeless, 

•  cabin-housed  : — “The  condition  of  the  cultivator,  in  the 
latter,  is  one  of  the  most  prosperous  that  could  be  seen.” 
“  And,”  he  asks,  “  whence  comes  this  difference  T  .  .  . 
In  Saxony  the  feudal  laws,  and  especially  those  of  the 
substitution,  have  vanished;  the  peasants  are  proprietors 
of  the  land  which  they  till,  and  are  interested  in  making 
it  give  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  produce.  In 
Bohemia  the  land  belongs  to  a  few  great  families,  who 

*  Quoted  by  Abbe  Peraud,  “Etudes  sur  LTrlande,”  vol.  i., 
p.  352. 

f  Ibid.  t.  i.,  p.  5. 


88 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


S 


manage  it  by  their  agents,  and  confine  themselves  to  carry¬ 
ing  away  the  revenues,  which  they  spend  afterwards  at 
Vienna.  “  In  consequence,  the  peasants  of  Bohemia,  like 
those  of  Ireland,  have  no  interest  in  the  improvement  of 
the  soil,  because  they  gather  no  profit  therefrom,  they  have 
no  hope  of  becoming  its  owners,  and  they  know  that  all 
the  fruits  of  their  industry  are  expended  among  strangers.”* 

Thus,  again,  does  nature,  in  the  moral  and  physical, 
in  the  animate  and  inanimate,  in  the  brute  and  in  the 
human  world,  alike  vindicate  her  law — “  like  CAUSE, 
LIKE  effect.”  Give  us  the  same  land  code  in  Ire¬ 
land  which  they  have  so  long  enjoyed  in  Saxony,  and 
Ireland  will  become  a  Saxony  in  agricultural  progress 
and  social  comfort.  A  Bohemia  as  it  is,  and  so  long 
has  been,  in  its  feudal  tenure  of  land,  which  may  be 
summarized  in  “  large  estates,  rack-rents,  absenteeism, 
and  irresponsible  agrarian  power,”  a  Bohemia  it  remains 
in  the  present  degraded  condition  of  its  people.  “  But,” 
says  John  Stuart  Mill,  “  the  most  decisive  example,  in 
opposition  to  the  English  prejudice  against  cultivation 
by  peasant  . proprietors,  is  the  case  of  Belgium.  The  soil 
is  originally  one  of  the  worst  in  Europe.”!  And  he  then 
quotes  M‘Culloch  (Geographical  Dictionary,  Art.,  Bel¬ 
gium,  “Flemish  Husbandry,”  &c.),  to  sustain  his  state¬ 
ment  :  “The  provinces,”  says  McCulloch,  “  of  West  and 
East  Flanders  and  Hainault  form  a  far  stretching  plain, 
of  which  the  luxuriant  vegetation  indicates  the  inde¬ 
fatigable  care  and  labor  bestowed  on  its  cultivation ; 
for  the  natural  soil  consists  almost  wholly  of  barren  sand, 
and  its  great  fertility  is  entirely  the  result  of  very  skil¬ 
ful  management,  and  judicious  application  of  various 
manures.”!  And  the  writer  of  the  treatise  referred  to 

*  Quoted  by  Abbe  Peraud,  “Etudes  sur  L’lrlaude,”  vol.  i., 
p.  354. 

t  Ibid.,  c.  vi. 


t  Ibid. 


t 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  7  89 

on  Flemish  industry  makes  the  following  extraordinary 
statement :  “  The  cultivation  of  a  poor,  light  soil,  or  a 
moderate  soil,  is  generally  superior  in  Flanders  to  that 
of  the  most  improved  farms  in  Great  Britain.”*  And 
how  has  this  come  to  pass  1  Because  “  much  of  the 
most  highly  cultivated  part  of  the  country  consists  of 
peasant  properties  managed  by  the  proprietors,  either 
wholly  or  partly  by  spade  industry. ”t 

Will  our  broad-acred  Irish  proprietors,  for  their  own 
sakes,  as  well  as  for  that  of  their  country  at  large,  con¬ 
sent  to  part  not  alone  with  a  little  of  their  legal  but 
iniquitous  rights,  but  also  with  a  portion  of  their  land, 
receiving,  of  course,  a  full  equivalent  ]  By  such  a  course 
none  could  be  the  losers,  all  would  gain.  The  proprietor 
was  handed  over  property  equally  valuable  and  secure ; 
the  peasant,  at  length,  had  an  object  for  which  to  toil. 
He  thus  increased  the  fertility  of  his  fields,  because  he 
could  call  them  his  own,  and  thereby  added  to  the 
general  wealth  of  the  nation. 

%  ■ 

*  Quoted  by  Abb6  Peraud",  “Etudes  sur  L’lrlande,”  vol.  i., 
p.  254.  * 

t  Ibid. 


TIIE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  V. 


FRANCE  AND  SWITZERLAND. 


“The  change  has  not  been  less  radical  or  less  productive  in  France  since 
feudal  slavery  disappeared,  and  the  greater  part  of  those  who  toiled  in  the 
service  of  others  became  proprietors,  and  profited  immediately  of  the  fruits  of 
their  labors.” — Abie  Peraud,  “ Etudes  sur  L'P-lande,"  tom.  1,  b.  11,  p.  356. 


FRANCE. 

The  land  tenure  of  France  is  so  familiar  to  all  classes 
of  readers  that  it  would  be  almost  waste  of  time  to  do 
otherwise  than  merely  glance  at  its  effects.  The 
“ancienne  noblesse”  stuck  to  their  feudal  high-handedness 
and  immunities,  and  the  revolution  swept  them  almost 
clear  off  the  land.  One  half  its  present  population  are 
owners  of  their  land  in  fee.  According  to  the  official 
report  of  the  Duke  of  Gaeta,  in  1815,  there  were 
6,000,000  proprietors,  holding  10,000,000  properties, 
and  giving  occupation  to  13,059,000  souls.  In  1835 
there  were  in  exact  numbers  10,893,528  separate  landed 
estates,  and  of  these  only  6,684  had  an  income  of  over 
£400  a  year.  In  1842,  the  number  of  properties  taxed 
was  11,511,841,  the  population  having  meantime  in¬ 
creased  from  33,329,573  to  34,376,722.  Thus  popula¬ 
tion  and  property  increased  in  almost  the  same  propor¬ 
tion  during  the  twenty-seven  years  from  1815  to  1842, 
the  one  being  18,  the  latter  14  per  cent.,  from  which 
M.  Passy,  Minister  of  Finance  under  Thiers,  draws  the 
conclusion  “  that,  instead  of  having  multiplied  beyond 


I 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  91 

measure,  the  number  of  proprietors  has  not  even  followed 
the  general  movement  of  the  population,  and  was,  rela¬ 
tively  to  the  total  mass  of  the  inhabitants  of  France,  a 
little  less  in  1842  than  it  was  in  1815.”*  In  other 
parts  of  his  “  Memoir  ”  M.  Passy  clearly  proves  how  un¬ 
founded  the  alarm  of  consolidators  and  entail  advocates 
is,  that,  subdivision  or  breaking  up  once  allowed,  there 
was  no  knowing  where  the  system  might  stop.  Over  forty 
years  ago  Mr.  M‘Culloch  prophesied  that  France  would 
become  a  “pauper  warren” from  that  cause.  Yet  thirty 
years  later  Keichensperger,  cited  by  Kay,  declared  that 
“  the  land  of  France  nourishes  at  the  present  day  thirty- 
four  millions  of  people  in  a  better  manner  than  it  used 
to  nourish  twenty-five  millions,”! — the  population  of 
France  before  the  revolution. 

We  cannot  refrain  from  giving  here  the  beautiful  ex¬ 
tract  from  La  Bruy&re,  which  we  find  in  a  note  in 
Peraud’s  work,J  though  we  cannot  verify  it  in  the  edition 
of  “  Les  Characteres ”  now  before  us.  Translated,  it  runs 
thus  :  “  We  see  certain  fierce  animals,  male  and  female, 
scattered  over  the  country,  black,  livid,  and  all  over  sun¬ 
burned,  belonging  ( attaches )  to  the  soil,  which  they  turn 
up  with  an  invincible  stubbornness  :  they  have  some¬ 
thing  like  an  articulate  voice,  and  when  they  stand  erect 
on  their  feet  they  show  a  human  face,  and,  in  point  of 
fact,  they  are  men :  they  retire  at  night  into  huts  in 
which  they  subsist  on  black  bread,  water,  and  roots ;  they 
spare  other  men  the  labor  of  sowing,  of  tilling,  and  of 
gathering  in  for  food,  and  thus  deserve  not  to  want  that 
bread  which  they  have  sown.”§  This  was  a  picture  of 
the  French  peasant  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  For 
“  black  bread  and  roots  ”  substitute  potatoes  and  salt, 

/  .  r  , 

*  Memoir  read  before  the  French  Institute  in  1843. 

f  Peraud,  ibid.  p.  356.  f  Vol.  i.,  p.  357.  §  D&  Vporue. 


92 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


and  you  have  the  Irish  peasant  painted  under  the  benig¬ 
nant  sway  of  Victoria  I. — an  eternal  reproach  to  her 
advisers,  and  the  greatest  scandal  of  her  reign. 

A  brief  review  of  the  causes  which  produced  all  the 
above  results  may  not  be  uninteresting  or  uninstructive. 
In  fact  the  causes  find  a  fair  parallel  in  Ireland  ;  and  it 
would  not  be  amiss  of  the  British  and  Irish  statesmen  of 
the  present  day  to  weigh  well  the  lesson  which  these 
causes  and  effects  so  forcibly  teach. 

Like  the  peasantry  of  Ireland  to-day  under  the  opera¬ 
tion  of  “  Arms  Acts,”  “  Peace  Proclamation  Acts,”  &c., 
those  of  France,  up  to  the  reign  of  Charles  VI.,  were  for¬ 
bidden  the  use  of  arms,  and  up  to  the  period  of  the 
Revolution  kept  in  a  state  of  practical  servitude.  In 
fact,  France  could  boast  of  no  yeomanry  like  England, 
and  like  England  when,  by  clearances  and  depopulation, 
she  lost  her  yeomanry — a  loss  so  feelingly  deplored  by 
her  wisest  statesmen  and  purest  patriots — France  paid 
the  penalty  in  defeat  and  disaster. 

“  Before  the  time  of  Charles  VI.,”  writes  Alison,  “  the 
jealousy  of  the  nobles  had  never  allowed  the  peasants  to 
be  instructed  in  the  use  of  arms ;  in  consequence  of  which 
they  had  no  archers  or  disciplined  infantry  to  oppose  to 
their  enemies,  and  were  obliged  to  seek  in  the  mountains 
of  Genoa  for  cross-bowmen  to  withstand  the  terrible 
yeomanry  of  England.  The  defeats  of  Cressy  and 
Poictiers,  of  Morat  and  Grauson,  were  the  result  of  this 
inferiority.  Not  that  the  natives  of  France  were  inferior 
in  natural  bravery  to  the  English  or  the  Swiss ;  but  that 
their  armies,  being  composed  entirely  of  military  tenants, 
had  no  force  to  oppose  to  the  steady  and  disciplined  and 
experienced  infantry  which,  in  every  age,  has  formed 
the  peculiar  strength  of  a  free  people.  Warned  by  these 
disasters,  the  French  government,  by  an  ordinance  of 
1394,  ordered  the  peasantry  throughout  the  whole 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


93 


country  to  be  instructed  in  the  use  of  the  bow,  and  the 
pernicious  practice  of  games  of  hazard  to  be  exchanged 
for  matches  at  archery.  They  made  rapid  progress  in 
the  new  exercises,  and  would  soon  have  rivalled  the 
English  bowmen;  but  the  jealousy  of  the  nobles  took 
the  alarm  at  the  increasing  energy  of  the  lower  orders. 
Martial  exercises  were  prohibited,  games  of  hazard  re¬ 
established,  and  the  people  lost  their  courage  from  want 
of  confidence  in  themselves,  and  the  defeat  of  Agincourt 
was  the  consequence.”*  One  cannot  fail  to  be  struck 
with  the  extraordinary  similarity  between  the  spirit  of  this 
effete  ancienne  noblesse,  of  France,  and  that  of  the  Crom- 
wellian  and  Williamite  lords  of  Ireland  of  the  present 
day.  Both  regarded  the  masses  of  the  people  as  not 
alone  an  inferior  caste,  but  almost  a  different  species  of 
human  beings.  While  the  former  denied  to  their  feudal 
serfs  the  first  elements  of  freedom,  they  multiplied  their 
own  monopolies,  privileges,  and  immunities  to  an  extent 
entirely  incompatible  with  the  safety  of  the  state.  It  is 
just  so  with  the  Irish  landlords  of  to-day.  A  much 
longer  retention  of  their  unnatural  power  cannot  but 
end,  as  in  France,  in  deplorable  convulsions  and  their 
own  ruin.  Of  this  difference  of  caste,  the  same  writer 
remarks  : — “  The  consequence  was  a  complete  separation 
of  the  higher  and  lower  orders,  and  the  establishment  of 
a  line  of  demarcation  which  neither  talent,  enterprise, 
nor  success  was  able  to  pass.”  “  It  is  a  terrible  thing,” 
says  Pascal,  “  to  reflect  on  the  effect  of  rank  :  it  gives 
the  child  new-born  a  degree  of  consideration,  which  half 
a  century  of  labor  and  virtue  could  not  procure  !”  “  Of 

all  the  circumstances  in  the  early  history  of  France,  there 
was  none  which  had  a  more  powerful  effect  than  this  in 
determining  the  character  of  the  revolution.  It  un- 

*  Hist,  of  Europe,  v.  i.,  p.  81,  quoting  Sismundi,  Hist,  de 
France. 


94 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


avoidably  created  a  privileged  class  at  variance  with, 
and  an  object  of  jealousy  to,  the  whole  remainder  of  the 
community.  What  was  still  more  fatal,  it  deprived  this 
class,  when  the  contest  commenced,  of  all  sympathy  or 
support,  save  in  a  peculiar  district,  from  the  rest  of  the 
community.  But  the  influence  of  despotism  in  modern 
times  cannot ,  permanently  extinguish  the  light  of  reason. 
The  press  has  provided  in  the  end  an  antidote  to  the 
worst  species  of  government,  except,  perhaps,  that  which 
arises  from  its  own  abuse  ;  its  influence  on  every  other 
oppression  may  be  slow,  but  it  is  progressive,  and  ulti¬ 
mately  irresistible.  In.  vain  the  monarchs  of  France 
studiously  degraded  the  lower  orders;  in  vain  they  veiled 
the  corruption  of  despotism  beneath  the  splendor  of 
military  glory;  in ;  vain  they  encouraged  science,  and 
rewarded  art,  and  sought  to  turn  the  flood  of  genius 
into'  the  narrow  channels  of  regulated  ambition ;  the 
vigor  of  thought  outstripped  the  fetters  of  power ;  the 
energy  of  civilisation  broke  the  bonds  of  slavery.  The 
middle,  ranks,  in  progress  of  time,  awoke  to  a  conscious¬ 
ness  of  their  importance;  ,the  restrictions  of  feudal 
manners,  revolting  to.  men  enlightened  by  the  progress 
of  knowledge ;  ■  the  chains  of  ancient  servitude,  insup¬ 
portable  to  those  who  felt  the  rising  ambition  of  freedom. 
Not  the  embarrassments  of  the  finances  ;  not  the  corrup¬ 
tion  of  the  court ;  not  the  sufferings  of  the  peasantry 
brought  about  the; convulsion  of  .the  nineteenth  century, 
for  they  are  to  be  found  matched  in  countries  disturbed 
by  no  convulsions  ;  but.  the  Hateful  Pride  of  the 
Aristocracy,  based  on  Centuries  of.  Exclusive 
Power,  and  galling  to  an  age  of  Ascending 
Ambition.”* 

Not  a  syllable  of  the  above  that  does  not  apply  to  Ire- 

*  Hist,  of  Europe,  v.  i.,  p.  83,  quoting  Simundi,  Hist,  de 
France. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


95 


land  at  tliis  hour.  Full  four  score  years  behind  France 
in  “  the  progress  of  knowledge,”  it  is  only  in  1869  that 
Ireland  means,  in  earnest,  to  accomplish,  one  way  or  other, 
that  liberation  of  the  soil  from  the  trammels  of  privi¬ 
leged  feudalism  which  the  men  of  1789  accomplished  in 
France.  Will  our  Cromwellian  landlords  take  a  lesson 
from  the  experience  of  that  terrible  epoch  ?  The  outraged 
manhood  of  France  would  have  received  with  gratitude, 
as  a  concession,  half  what  they  wrested  from  monopoly 
without  thanks.  The  present  movement  throughout  Ire¬ 
land  pretty  clearly  shows  that  here,  too,  “the  influence  of 
despotism  has  not  permanently  extinguished  the  light  of 
reason  ”  in  her  soul.  The  Irish  people  know  their  reason¬ 
able  rights,  and  they  are  quite  resolved,  as  they  are 
strictly  bound,  never  to  cease  in  their  struggle  until  vic¬ 
tory  is  achieved. 

The  views  above  enunciated  by  the  great  European 
historian  are  confirmed  by  the  illustrious  French  writer 
and  statesman,  Thiers,  in  the  following  language  : 
“  Numerous  and  serious  as  the  grievances  of  the  French 
nation  were,  it  was  not  they  that  occasioned  the  revolu¬ 
tion.  Neither  the  taxes,  nor  the  lettres  de  cachet,  nor  the 
other  abuses  of  authority,  nor  the  vexations  of  the 
'  prefects,  nor  the  ruinous  delays  of  justice,  have  irritated  the 
nation  ;  it  is  the  prestige  of  nobility  which  has  excited  all 
the  ferment.  ...  In  fact,  it  is  an  extraordinary  circum¬ 
stance  that  the  nation  should  say  to  a  child  possessed  of 
parchment :  ‘You  shall  one  day  be,  either  a  prelate,  a 
marshal,  or  an  ambassador,  as  you  choose,’  while  it  has 
nothing  to  offer  to  its  other  children.”* 

Reverting  to  the  same  subject,  the  famous  author  of 
the  “  History  of  Europe  ”  says  :  “  Insult  is  more  keenly 
felt  than  injury.  The  pride  of  nobility  is  more  difficult 

i 

*  Quoted  by  Alison,  ibid.,  p.  162. 


96 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


to  tolerate  than  all  the  exclusive  advantages  of  its  order. 
....  The  distinction  of  nobility  and  base-born  was 
carried  to  a  length  in  France,  of  which  it  is  difficult,  in 
this  free  country,  to  form  a  conception.  Every  person  was 
either  noble  or  roturier;  no  middle  class,  no  shades  of  dis¬ 
tinction  were  known.  On  the  one  side  were  a  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  privileged  individuals ;  on  the  other 
the  whole  body  of  the  French  people . The  indus¬ 

trious  classes,  the  men  of  talent,  the  men  of  wealth,  were 
unanimous  in  their  hatred  of  the  nobility  ;  the  universal 
cry  was  for  liberty  and  EQUALITY,  a  cry  almost  unknown 
during  the  English  rebellion.  .  .  .  The  insurrection  was 
less  against  the  throne  than  against  the  nobility — against 
the  oppressive  weight  of  feudal  tyranny,  inconsistent  with 
the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  bequeathed  by  the  power  of 
barbarian  conquest.”*  How  descriptive  of  the  state 
of  feeling  that  prevails  at  this  moment  in  Ire¬ 
land!  Change  names,  put  Ireland  for  France,  landlord 
for  nobility,  8,000  for  150,000,  and  the  Irish  people  for 
the  French  nation,  and  the  description  of  the  Ireland  of 
1869  is  perfect. 

The  cup,  however,  had  overflown  :  the  revolution  with, 
it  must  be  admitted,  all  its  horrors,  broke  like  a  thunder¬ 
storm  over  France.  Its  fiercest  force  fell  first  on  the 
proud  noblesse ,  who,  as  a  body,  would  not,  up  to  the  last 
moment,  yield  an  inch.  They  fled  before  it,  and  emigrated 
en  masse.  As  in  England,  over  three  hundred  years  ago, 
so  in  France  in  1789,  the  peasants  rose  throughout  many 
of  the  provinces,  and  burned,  and  pillaged,  and  butchered^ 
without  mercy  or  scruple,  all  before  them.  The  alarm 
caught  the  National  Assembly,  which,  on  the  motion  of 
a  noble  himself,  the  Viscount  de  Noailles,  abolished  the 
feudal  exemption  of  his  order  from  taxes,  which  hencef  orth 


*  Ibid.  p.  163. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


97 


✓ 


were  to  fall  equally  on  all  classes,  while  feudal  personal 
servitude  was  to  cease  for  ever.  In  the  space  of  a  few 
hours  the  entire  fabric  of  feudal  sway  had  crumbled  to  the 
earth.  But  the  legal  demolition  came,  unfortunately,  too 
late ;  its  practical  and  real  destruction  had  already  pre¬ 
ceded  it  throughout  the  greater  part  of  France.  “  There 
is  no  one,”  says  the  Duke  d’Aguillon,  at  the  sitting  of 
that  memorable  4th  of  August,  1789,  “  who  must  not 
groan  over  the  scenes  of  horror  which  France  at  this 
moment  exhibits.  The  effervescence  of  the  people 
who  have  conquered  freedom,  when  guilty  ministers 
thought  to  ravish  it  from  them,  lias  now  become  an  ob¬ 
stacle  to  freedom,  at  a  time  when  the  views  of  government 
are  again  in  harmony  with  the  wishes  of  the  nation.  It 
is  not  merely  the  brigands  who,  with  arms  in  their 
hands,  wish  to  enrich  themselves  in  the  midst  of  public 
calamities.  In  many  provinces  the  entire  mass  of  the 
peasantry  have  formed  themselves  into  a  league  to  destroy 
the  chateaus,  ravage  the  lands,  and,  above  all,  get  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  charter-chests  where  the  feudal  titles  are 
deposited.  They  seek  to  shake  off  a  yoke  which,  for 
centuries,  has  weighed  upon  them,  and  we  must  admit 
that — though  that  insurrection  is  culpable  (what  violent 
aggression  is  not  so  1 — we  may  add,  of  Irish  land-tyrants  1 
yet  it  finds  much  excuse  in  the  vexations  which  had 
produced  it.  The  proprietors  of  fiefs  or  of  seignorial  rights, 
it  is  true,  have  seldom  themselves  perpetrated  the 
injustice  of  which  their  vassals  complain,  but  their 
stewards  and  agents  have  done  so,  and  the  unhappy 
laborer,  subjected  to  the  barbarous  yoke  of  feudal  laws, 
which  still  subsist  in  France,  groans  under  the  constraint 
of  which  he  is  the  victim.”  Again  change  names,  and 
the  Irish  peasant,  tenant-at-will,  the  Irish  agent,  steward, 
and  landlord,  are  the  subject  of  observation,  of  alternate 
yity  and  censure.  He  proceeds  almost  in  the  tone  of 


G 


08 


TEE  IRISE  LANDLORD 


gome  well-meaning,  but  prejudice-blinded  Irish  landlords 
of  this  day :  “  These  rights,  it  must  be  admitted,  are 
property,  and  all  property  is  sacred ;  but  they  are 
burdensome  to  the  people,  and  all  are  agreed  as  to  the 
continual  vexations  which  they  produce.  In  this  en¬ 
lightened  age,  when  a  sound  philosophy  has  resumed  its 
empire ;  at  this  fortunate  moment,  when,  united  for  the 
public  good,  and  free  from  all  personal  interest,  we  are 
called  upon  to  labor  for  the  regeneration  of  the  state ; 
it  appears  to  me  that,  before  proceeding  to  the  construc¬ 
tion  of  a  constitution,  so  ardently  desired  by  the  nation, 
we  should  prove  to  all  the  citizens  that  our  wish  is  even 
to  anticipate  their  desires,  and  to  establish  as  quickly  as 
possible  that  equality  of  rights  which  should  ever  prevail 
among  men,  and  can  alone  secure  their  liberty.  I  doubt 
not  but  the  proprietors  of  fiefs,  the  lords  of  estates,  will 
be  the  first  to  agree  to  the  renunciation  of  their  rights 
on  reasonable  indemnity.  They  have  already  renounced 
their  pecuniary  exemptions ;  we  cannot  expect  them  to 
renounce  gratuitously  their  feudal  rights — but  we  may 
expect  them  to  consent  to  the  purchase  of  their  seigno- 
rial  rights  by  their  vassals,  at  a  price  to  be  fixed  on  a 
moderate  scale  by  the  Assembly.”* 

No  utterances,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  more  ap¬ 
propriate  to  the  case  of  Ireland,  could  proceed  from  the 
lips  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to-day.  Will  the  Irish  landlords  of 
this  hour,  before  it  is  too  late,  “  be  the  first  to  agree  to  a 
renunciation  of  their  rights  on  reasonable  indemnity,”  as 
the  French  “  proprietors  of  fiefs  and  lords  of  estates”  were 
when  time  for  renunciation  had  flown  1  Will  they  take 
warning  from  example?  They  are  not  one  whit  more 
secure  in  the  retention  of  their  feudality  now  than  the 
French  noblesse  fancied  themselves  eighty  years  ago. 


*  Hist.  Par.  ii.,  225-227. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


99s 

Timely  concession  may  avert  the  terrible  fate  which 
feudal  obstinacy  ultimately  entailed  on  the  unhappy 
Seigneurs.  By  successive  decrees  the  following  confis¬ 
cations  took  place,  as  the  result  of  this  demented  reten¬ 
tion  of  unrighteous  “  rights  ” : — 


From  May  1 7th  1 79 0,  to 
Jan.  18th,  1795,  the 
sales  of  the  national  do¬ 
mains,  chiefly  Church  Francs, 
property,  brought :  1,500,000,000  = 

From  Jan.  18th,  1795, 
to  Sept.  20th,  1795,  601,000,000 

From  Sept.  20th,  1795, 
to  Nov.  25th,  1795,  316,464,000  = 

From  Nov.  25th,  1795, 
to  June  30th,  1801,  -  127,231,000  = 


£ 

60,000,000 

24,000,000 

12,750,000 

5,800,000 


Total,  -  -  2,555,133,000  =  103,050,000* 


And  as,  manifestly,  this  enormous  amount  of  money 
was  hardly  half  the  real  value  of  the  land,  sold  under 
such  uncertain  circumstances,  wre  may  fairly  estimate 
the  immense  quantity  of  land  that  thus  violently  changed 
hands.  Add  to  this  700,000,000  frs.,  or  £28,000,000, 
more  worth,  which  remained  unsold,  and  which  was 
partially  restored  by  Napoleon,  and  we  may  realize  to 
ourselves  the  incalculable  loss  to  the  nobility  of  not 
listening  in  time  to  the  warning  voice.  No  doubt, 
during  the  ordeal,  the  trial  to  France  herself  had  been 
very  severe.  But  she  has  tided  over  it,  and,  as  the  above 
authorities — that  of  Monsieur  Passy,  the  Duke  of  Gaeta, 
and  Abb6  Peraucl — attest,  France  has  consolidated  her 


*  Compte  rendu  de  Hamel,  “  Statis.  de  France.” 


100 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


power  and  trebled  her  resources  by  the  extinction  of  a 
feudal  tenure  of  land,  and  the  substitution  of  minute 
ownership  and  cultivation. 

The  following  authority  for  the  present  hour  may  not 
be  uninteresting  to  the  future  reader.  The  Irish  Times 
special  correspondent  thus  writes  : — 

“  Before  crossing  the  frontier,  I  am  anxious  to  give 
the  result  of  my  inquiry  as  to  the  progress  of  agriculture 
generally  in  France. 

“I  had  fully  satisfied  my  mind  of  the  immense 
advancement  of  the  farming  of  this  country,  not  only 
from  the  comparative  returns,  which  I  carefully  perused, 
but  also  from  my  own  observance,  and  minute  and  care¬ 
ful  inquiry  from  old  and  intelligent  people.  What, 
then,  was  my  surprise,  on  casually  taking  up  an  English 
paper  a  few  days  ago,  to  read  the  deplorable  account 
given  by  the  Earl  of  Carnarvon  of  the  hopeless  position 
of  the  small  proprietors  of  France !  Have  I  been  dream¬ 
ing,  or  have  my  eyes  and  ears  been  deceived  h 

“It  is  true  that  time  and  the  limits  of  your  paper 
obliged  me  to  concentrate  my  attention  on  a  few  dis¬ 
tricts,  and  that  I  have  not  penetrated  to  the  extremities 
of  this  great  empire  on  all  sides.  So  general  a  visitation 
would  take  me  months,  if  not  years.  But  there  is 
scarcely  one  of  the  eighty-nine  departments  from  which 
I  have  not  had  letters  from  intelligent  and  experienced 
men,  and  these  reports  and  returns,  from  which'  Lord 
Carnarvon  says  he  derives  his  facts,  have  also  been  put 
at  my  disposal  by  the  Minister  of  Agriculture.  In  vain 
do  I  wade  through  them  in  search  of  these  gloomy  pre¬ 
dictions  of  the  future,  founded  on  past  experience,  to 
which  this  clever  English  statesman  refers. 

“  Of  course,  in  abstracting  a  word  or  a  figure  here  and 
there,  or  in  quoting  an  opinion  given  by  an  occasional 
grumbler  in  course  of  the  government  inquiries,  a  case 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


101 


may  be  made.  But  from  a  man  of  ability,  of  research, 
and  of  heart,  like  my  Lord  Carnarvon,  I  could  scarcely 
expect  a  nisi  prius  narrowness  and  dexterity  such  as 
this.  I  can  only  believe  that  his  lordship,  like  a  vast 
number  of  less  enlightened  Englishmen,  has  made  up  his 
mind  that  small  proprietorship  has  resolved  into  practice 
the  gloomy  theories  propounded  concerning  it  for  several 
years  past  by  our  countrymen,  and  that  he  has  heard 
from  others,  but  not  read  for  himself,  that  some  of  the 
French  government  reports  speak  a  little  despondingly 
of  the  continued  amorcellements  of  the  farmers,  and  of 
the  increased  mortgages  bearing  on  the  farmers. 

“  Let  his  lordship  look  at  home,  and  he  will  find  an 
infinitely  more  gloomy  prospect  for  his  own  country,  in 
the  constant  agglomeration  of  estates  into  few  hands; 
nor  will  he  find,  on  inquiry,  that  the  lands  of  England 
are  also  quite  free  from  mortgage  and  family  settlement 
incumbrances. 

“  For  my  part,  seeing  with  my  eyes,  hearing  with  my 
ears,  wading  through  incontrovertible  figures,  I  have 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  French  system  of  peasant 
proprietorship  has  enormously  extended  the  cultivation 
of  the  soil  and  the  wealth  of  the  country ;  that  it  has 
produced  a  happy  and  socially  free  people ;  that  it  has 
intensified  the  patriotism  of  the  population,  while  count¬ 
eracting  the  wild  desire  for  change  and  reckless  theories 
of  the  men  of  the  towns ;  and  that  it  only  needs  a  modi¬ 
fication  of  the  law  of  inheritance  to  prevent  too  excessive 
subdivision  of  the  land,  and  a  greater  facility  of  capital, 
to  increase  to  a  still  more  remarkable  degree  the  pro¬ 
ducts  of  the  soil. 

“Agricultural  France  moves  on  no  downward  decline. 
On  the  contrary,  if  the  cities  cause  no  sudden  political 
shock,  these  free  and  independent  men  who  till  the  soil 
they  own  will,  in  due  time,  make  France  a  garden  of 


102 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


amazing  produce.  Our  fathers  were  taught  to  believe 
that  every  Frenchman  was  a  frog-eater,  and  it  was  as 
difficult  to  root  the  absurd  idea  from  their  minds,  as  it  is 
now  to  persuade  even  thinking  men  in  England  and  Ire¬ 
land  that  France  is  not  on  the  high  road  to  ruin  from  a 
sub-divided  soil.'  The  younger  prejudice  is  as  contrary 
to  fact  as  the  elder.  But  you  must  rather  take  hard 
figures  than  my  words,  at  the  same  time  recollecting  that 
the  returns  of  the  last  decennial  period  only  come  down 
(with  a  few  exceptions)  to  18G2,  and  were  only  finally 
compiled  last  year.  The  subsequent  return,  I  am  informed, 
will  be  still  more  favorable. 

“From  1851  to  1861  there  was  an  increase  of  land 
rated  as  of  first  quality  of  4,095  hectares.  Very 
little  of  the  land  of  France  comes  under  the  denomi¬ 
nation  of  prime  quality,  and  the  increase  will  be 
accounted  for  by  petting  and  high  manuring  of  good  land 
previously  run  out.  Tillage  lands  have  increased  by 
310,691  hectares  in  the  same  decennial  period.  This 
was  not  by  breaking  up  of  grass  lands,  but  by  reclama¬ 
tion — certain  wastes  in  various  parts  having  been  re¬ 
claimed  to  the  amount  of  371,116  hectares  in  the  ten 
years.  Thus  the  people  who,  forsooth,  are  going  so  fast 
to  ruin,  have  brought  within  cultivation  by  their  sturdy 
arms,  within  so  short  a  period,  nearly  a  million  acres  of 
land!  The  meadows  and  grass  lands  of  France  from 
1851  to  1861  were  increased  by  3,847  hectares.  Thevine- 
yards  in  that  period  extended  their  creeping  culture  on 
the  hill  sides,  to  the  increased  amount  of  1 1 1,692  hectares. 

“  If  the  country  is  being  ruined  by  small  farming, 
according  to  the  authority  of  Lord  Carnarvon,  of  course 
the  net  annual  rural  value  of  the  soil  is  diminishing. 
But  I  find  the  amount  which  in  1821  was  1,580,597,000 
francs,  had  risen  in  1862  to  2,643,365,716  francs,  or  an 
increase  of  1,062,768,716  francs.  The  increase  alone, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


103 


under  this  so-called  depressing  system  of  sub-division,  is 
equal  to  more  than  three  times  the  annual  income  of  Ire¬ 
land  rated  to  the  poor  !  But,  probably,  Lord  Carnarvon 
will  suppose  that  these  wretched  small  farmers  he  holds 
in  such  contempt,  and  of  whom  he  fears  so  much  to  see 
the  counterpart  in  Ireland,  are  falling  off  to  a  culture  of 
potatoes,  and  are  unable  to  grow  a  cereal  crop  of  any  value. 
There  is  no  deterioration,  at  all  events,  if  I  am  to  believe 
the  imperial  returns. 

“In  1810— 1 -I  class  all  the  corn  crops  as  cereals  for  brevity, 
but  wheat  has  made  the  principal  progress — in  1840  the 
value  of  the  cereal  crop  was  2,110,000,000  of  francs.  In 
1852  it  rose  to  2,614,000,000  of  francs.  This  seems  a  res¬ 
pectable  figure,  but  I  find  these  ruined  farmers  of  my  Lord 
Carnarvon  brought  it  still  higher  in  1862,  when  the  crop 
was  estimated  at  3,865,000,000  of  francs,  being  an  in¬ 
crease  of  23*49  per  cent,  between  1840  and  1852,  and  of 
48‘23  per  cent,  from  1852  to  1862. 

“  Pray  let  those  gentlemen  who  sit  at  home  at  ease  and 
persuade  themselves  that  French  agriculture,  in  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  interfering  landlords  and  self-sufficient  English 
agents,  is  going  to  the  dogs,  note  the  fact  that  the  value 
of  cereals  from  1840  to  1852  increased  no  less  than  82-70 
per  cent.  This  will  be  accounted  for  by  some  increased 
price.  But,  really,  wheat  has  not  greatly  varied  in  value 
since  the  great  French  Revolution.  Neither  is  the  increase 
owing  to  extended  superficies  of  planting.  That  progress 
was  only  7  per  cent,  in  the  period.  It  was  the  more 
cheering  and  hopeful  effect  of  improved  cultivation. 

“In  the  figures  I  have  just  quoted  I  have  given  you  but 
the  value  of  the  grain  alone.  The  straw  increased  in 
value  in  the  decennial  period  from  1852  to  1862x  by  the 
respectable  figure  of  67*01  per  cent.  I  am  quite  ready 
to  agree  to  what  Lord  Carnarvon  may  sneer  at,  as  the 
minor  amount  of  produce  a  French  hectare  is  made  to 


104 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


yield  in  comparison  with  an  English  one.  I  believe  an 
average  acre  of  English  wheat  is  more  than  double  that 
of  a  French.  The  French  will  come  up  to  it  by-and-by. 

My  argument  is  much  confined  to  the  proof  that  agri¬ 
culture  here,  by  reason  of  the  tenure  in  perpetuity  and 
sub-division  of  the  soil,  is  not  retrograding,  but  is  ad¬ 
vancing  with  giant  strides.  In  1852  the  value,  I  admit, 
of  a  hectare  of  grain  in  France  was  only  209  francs. 
But  that  increased  in  the  next  ten  years  to  312  francs. 
Lord  Carnarvon  says  the  French  Commissioners  of  Inquiry 
are  desponding.  Probably  you  would  permit  me  to  quote 
one  of  the  most  desponding  sentences  of  the  report  now 
before  me — 1  De  tons  les  reseignments  qui  precedent  il  re- 
snlte  que  la  culture  de  cereales  est  en  voie  de  pr  ogres  l 
i  The  result  of  all  the  preceding  information  is  that 
cereal  culture  is  in  a  progressive  state.’  I  should  think 
so. 

“  I  now  ask  you  to  accept  a  few  returns  of  what  are 
classed  as  ‘  alimentary  farinaceous  products,’  and 
amongst  which  you  may  be  surprised  to  learn  that  chest¬ 
nuts  form  no  inconsiderable  part. 

“  But,  leaving  some  one  else  to  draw  the  chestnuts  out 
of  the  fire,  I  confine  myself  to  the  more  homely  product 
of  potatoes.  In  1840,  on  a  superficies  of  921,970  hec¬ 
tares  of  this  crop,  theproduction  amounted  to  96,234,935 
hectolitres,  the  value  of  which  was  202,106,866  francs. 
"When  we  come  to  1862,  we  find  an  increase  to  this 
already  respectable  value  of  eight  million  pounds  ster¬ 
ling,  of  48  per  cent,  in  quantity,  and  141  per  cent,  in 
value.  The  increase  was  not  in  deterioration  of  the 
French  farmer’s  diet.  It  rather  went  to  feed  my  Lord 
Carnarvon’s  countrymen,  for  45,000  tons  of  potatoes  are 
now  annually  exported  from  this  country.  Let  us  now 
look  at  the  comparative  returns  of  the  great  French 
ameliorative  crop,  beet-root,  and  let  us  note  whether 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


105 


the  small  farm  system  of  peasant  proprietors  is  ex¬ 
hausting  the  soil  of  France.  Of  this  root,  the  value  of 
the  crop  in  1840  was  28,973,449  francs.  In  1852,  it  was 
57,069,498  francs,  and  at  the  last  return,  in  1862,  the 
value  had  risen  to  84,178,187  francs.  I  find  that  the 
superficies  planted  with  this  valuable  root  increased 
93*32  per  cent,  from  1840  to  1852  ;  and  22*58  per  cent, 
from  the  latter  year  to  1862.  The  amount  of  produce 
in  the  same  article  in  1840  Avas  15,740,691  metric  quin¬ 
tals  ;  increased  in  1852  to  32,248,846  metric  quintals, 
and  extending  in  1862  to  the  quantity  of  44,267,585 
quintals,  being  a  total  increase  since  1840  of  182*21  per 
cent.  In  this  article  of  culture,  as  well  as  in  all  others 
in  France,  the  product  has  been  increasing  in  an  infi¬ 
nitely  greater  proportion  than  the  superficies  planted,  a 
fact  Avhich  is  the  best  and  healthiest  sign  of  farming,  for 
such  improvement  of  bulk  of  production  comes  from 
advancing  skill  and  increased  capital. 

“  The  colza  plant  is  greatly  cultivated  for  the  extrac 
tion  of  oil.  We  shall  see  if  it  be  in  this  crop  that  France 
is  getting  into  that  ruinous  state  that  the  Earl  of  Car¬ 
narvon  describes.  I  find  by  the  returns — it  is  unneces¬ 
sary  to  go  into  minute  particulars — that  the  value  of 
the  crop  has  increased  75*63  per  cent,  since  1840,  Avhile, 
in  the  same  period,  the  produce  of  the  hemp  crop  has  in¬ 
creased  41*89  per  cent.,  and  that  of  flax,  35*80.  The 
average  quantity  of  these  articles,  except  hemp,  groAvn 
per  hectare,  has  considerably  advanced. 

“  As  to  tobacco,  to  which  I  have  before  referred,  the 
superficies  under  crop  has  increased  from  1840  from  79*53 
hectares  to  17*689  hectares,  and  the  product  per  hectare 
from  11*17  to  14*25  metric  quintals.  The  value  of  the 
crop  per  hectare  has  risen  from  683  to  1,213  francs. 
The  growth  of  hops  has  also  considerably  increased. 
The  return  from  natural  meadows  has  risen  25  per  cent. 


10G 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


since  1840,  being  caused  by  greater  attention  to  irriga¬ 
tion  and  surface  manure.  The  value  of  artificial  meadows 
has  increased  13  per  cent.  All  forage  crops  (turnips  in¬ 
cluded)  have  greatly  increased  in  superficies  devoted  to 
them,  in  the  average  amount  of  produce  per  hectare,  and 
in  the  total  cash  value. 

“  I  have  in  a  former  letter  referred  to  the  enormous  in¬ 
crease  in  vineyard  value.  Taking  all  crops  together, 
their  total  value  in  1840  was  estimated  at  3,627,000,000 
of  francs ;  in  1852,  at  4,502,000,000  of  francs.  But  at 
the  last  return  the  estimate  given  reached  the  enormous 
value  of  7,664,000,000  of  francs — an  astounding  fact  for 
the  clever  English  nobleman  who  believes  a  country  can 
alone  flourish  in  large  farms,  and  that  peasant  proprietor¬ 
ship  has  doomed  to  ruin  the  agriculture  of  France.  But 
for  my  argument— or  rather  in  the  cause  of  strict,  unpre¬ 
judiced  truth — it  may  be  desirable  to  come  at  the  acre- 
able,  or  per  hectare  value  of  the  crops  raised  then  at  the 
aggregate.  In  1840  we  find  the  average  value  of  pro¬ 
duction  of  a  hectare  to  have  been  154  francs.  In  the 
next  decennial  period  to  1852  the  average  went  up  to 
177  francs,  and  in  the  last  period  it  reached  the  still 
higher  figures  of  277  francs.  Improved  prices  of  some 
articles,  it  is  true,  may  account  for  this  cheering  result, 
but  it  rather,  and  mainly,  is  to  be  attributed  to  better 
culture,  and  consequently  larger  crops.  Possibly,  how¬ 
ever,  this  extraordinary  prosperity,  or  at  least  advance¬ 
ment,  may  be  accounted  for  by  a  rush  upon  the  soil, 
and  a  rapid  gain  at  the  expense  of  its  exhaustion.  If 
this  be  so,  the  number  of  horses  and  cattle  in  the  country 
will  be  small,  and  will  be  daily  diminishing.  Pray, 
bear  with  a  few  figures  on  this  important  part  of  the 
question.  I  can  bring  some  of  them  down  to  1866. 
There  are  amongst  the  farmers  of  France  2,914,412 
horses,  330, 98 7  mules,  and  397,237  asses.  Their  cattle 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


107 


sheds  and  fields  contain  over  twelve  millions  of  black 
cattle  ;  in  precision  the  number  is  12,811,589  head.  The 
number  of  6,037,543  pigs  grunt  in  the  styes.  Of  the 
ovine  race  29,529,678  (nearly  thirty  millions)  of  sheep 
crop  the  close  herbage  or  fatten  on  the  distillery  refuse. 
The  mountain  districts  have  their  valuable  goats — 
1,726,398  of  the  caprine  race  are  numbered  in  France. 
The  total  head  of  farm  beasts  in  France  is  53,746,844; 
and  if  we  go  into  detail  of  more  minute  living  creatures 
of  value  on  the  farms,  we  find  that  fowls  of  all  kinds 
number  60,145,290,  and  the  hives  of  bees  to  be  2,426,578. 
In  making  comparative  inquiry  as  to  the  wealth  of  the 
country  in  horses,  flocks,  and  herds,  as  between  1852 
and  1862,  I  find  of  the  horse  species  the  increase  has 
been  17  per  cent,  in  the  ten  years.  In  mules  it  has 
been  11*46  per  cent.,  and  in  asses  4-8  per  cent.  The 
increase  in  the  bovine  race  from  1840  to  1862  has  been 
10 '25  per  cent,  in  number,  but  in  the  quality  and  value 
of  the  animals  the  improvement  has  been  far  greater. 
In  sheep  there  has  been  rather  a  falling  off  in  numbers, 
a  fact  not  uncommon  to  France.  Here  the  small  de¬ 
crease  might  be  easily  accounted  for  by  the  numerous  sales, 
and  enclosures,  and  tillage  of  commons,  where  before 
there  was  a  general  right  of  depasturage,  and  also  by  the 
disuse  of  fallows.  The  improved  herd  of  sheep  has  in¬ 
creased  18 '5  per  cent,  in  the  decennial  period.  The  in¬ 
crease  in  the  number  of  pigs  has  been  22*17  per  cent, 
since  1840.  The  weight  of  animals  killed  for  butchery, 
as  ascertained  in  the  principal  abattoirs  of  centres  of  con¬ 
sumption,  has  sensibly  increased  also.  Thus,  from  1853 
to  1859  the  average  weight  of  the  ox  was  335  kilo¬ 
grammes  ;  of  the  fat  cow,  229  ;  of  the  calf,  67  ;  and  of  the 
sheep,  19  kilogrammes;  while  from  1860  to  1866  the 
respective  weight  of  these  animals  was  348,  243,  65,  and 
20  kilogrammes.  All  have  had  a  considerable  increase, 


108 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


except  calves,  which  have  slightly  diminished  in  the 
average  weight  of  carcass.  The  total  value  of  lands  in 
France  is  estimated  at  nearly  one  hundred  milliards  of 
francs,  and  the  average  selling  value  per  hectare  is  3,066 
francs,  which  is  something  near  <£50  the  English  acre. 
The  price  of  land  is  daily  increasing. 

“  I  have  already  troubled  you  with  so  many  figures, 
that  I  shall  not  go  into  the  details  of  farming  imple¬ 
ments  in  France,  but  the  improved  kinds  are  being 
rapidly  extended  to  use,  though  from  the  smallness  of 
the  farms  large  machinery  is,  of  course,  less  sought  than 
in  England.  In  some  departments,  however,  I  noticed 
that  the  combination  of  many  small  farmers  was  being 
formed  for  the  introduction  of  steam  machinery.  This 
will  regulate  itself  in  time,  according  to  the  abundance 
or  scarcity  of  laboring  hands.  From  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  holdings,  and  the  fact  of  ownership,  the  families 
themselves  work  incessantly  in  developing  and  improv¬ 
ing  the  farms,  and  large  numbers  of  outside  laborers 
are  not  engaged  in  agriculture.  The  wages  of  cities  has 
in  late  years  also  been  so  large  that  the  best  workmen 
migrate  from  the  country  districts.  Wages  are  increas¬ 
ing  sensibly,  if  not  rapidly,  and  I  know  of  no  country  in 
which  the  laborer  is  in  a  better  state.  His  industry 
and  thrift  are  constantly  excited  by  the  hope  that  one 
day  he  may  buy  the  fee  of  a  little  patch  of  land  for 
himself  and  family.  How  the  laborer  in  England  or 
Ireland  would  be  laughed  at  who  dreamed  of  becoming 
the  lord  in  fee  even  of  the  little  plot  on  which  his  roof- 
tree  was  reared  !  The  average  wages  of  men  employed 
as  agricultural  laborers  in  France  is  1  franc  90  centimes 
— say,  one  shilling  and  eightpence  a  day;  of  women,  96 
centimes,  or  ninepence  halfpenny ;  and  of  children,  66 
centimes,  or  sixpence  halfpenny. 

“  Where  is  all  this  decadence,  this  coming  ruin  of 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


109 


French  agriculture,  of  which  my  Lord  Carnarvon  so  self- 
sufficiently  speaks  to  gaping  and  credulous  English 
bumpkins'?  I  know  that  the  law  of  France,  in  one  or 
two  of  the  articles  of  the  Code  Napoleon  referring  to 
succession,  bears  hard  on  the  owners,  and  leads  to  a  too 
strictly  enforced  morcell ement.  I  know,  too,  how  the 
small  proprietor,  in  want  of  funds  for  the  improvement 
of  his  farm’s  productiveness,  is  much  at  the  mercy  of 
local  usurers  and  financial  intermediaries.  I  am  not 
ignorant  of  the  wretchedly  restricted  state  of  banking 
accommodation  in  France,  nor  of  the  considerable  taxa¬ 
tion  which  a  state  of  things  that  may  be  called  a  Pla¬ 
tonic  war  entails.  Further,  I  see  with  horror  the 
frequent  sufferings  of  the  rustic  family,  when  the  strong 
arm  that  helps  the  father  to  guide  the  plough  has  forced 
into  it  the  hateful  musket  by  the  laws  of  the  military 
proscription.  But,  taking  the  farmer  of  France  for  all 
in  all,  I  find  he  is  a  credit  and  an  honor  to  his  country 
and  to  his  race.  No  landlord,  through  kind  or  unkind 
intention,  lingers  about  his  fields  and  watches  the  crops 
he  grows,  the  food  he  eats.  He  can  marry  his  daughter 
and  plant  his  son  in  his  own  shoes  without  fearing  the 
frown  of  the  superintending  providence  of  an  Irish 
farmer — the  agent.  He  knows  no  man  living,  if  they 
pay  their  way,  can  turn  his  descendants  from  the  little 
fields  he  now  labors.  He  digs  in  confidence,  and  when 
money  comes  to  him  from  fortune  or  thrift,  he  is  not 
afraid  to  own  it,  and  he  buries  it  in  the  face  of  day  in 
the  soil  which  he  proudly  treads,  as  his  most  assured 
savings  bank.  With  his  hands  in  his  pockets  on  a  holiday 
he  is  the  equal  of  his  fellow  beings,  and  he  disdains  to 
call  any  man  lord.  Eminently  conservative,  the  smallest 
farmer  sets  up  his  back  against  aught  that  threatens 
disloyalty  to  the  government.  And  if  sometimes  the 
fiery  love  of  mutability  of  the  towns  is  too  much  for 


110 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


him,  he  watches  his  opportunity,  and  gives  the  next 
decisive  vote  in  the  cause  of  order.  When  that  voice  is 
uttered  in  the  voting  urn,  the  French  peasant  proprietor, 
though  secretly  voting,  is  answerable  alone  to  God  and 
to  his  conscience  for  what  he  does.  He  has  not  earth 
and  heaven,  soul  and  body,  on  either  side  hissing  their 
threats  into  his  terrified  ear.  Free  as  the  air  around 
him,  the  ordinary  peasant  proprietor  of  France  would 
indignantly  cast  aside  either  the  priest  or  the  landlord 
who  presumed  to  dictate  how  his  voice  should  be 
given. 

“If  such  is  a  misfortune,  if  this  be  ruin,  if  peasant 
proprietorship  be  beggary,  if  increasing  wealth  and 
prosperity  be  symptoms  of  decay,  then  my  Lord  Car¬ 
narvon  is  right,  and  all  other  countries  will  carefully 
avoid  the  example  of  France,  and  will  remain  as  they 
are,  to  wallow  in  filth  with  their  pigs,  to  whine  and 
cringe  at  the  feet  of  foreign  agents,  to  live  without  hope, 
and  to  die  despairing  of  their  descendants.57 

ISlo  better  service  to  truth  can  be  effected  than  the 
extended  reproduction  of  this  most  important  paper. 
We  therefore  leave  it  to  speak  for  itself,  and  for  the 
agricultural  condition  of  France  at  the  present  moment. 
Many,  indeed,  have  been  the  efforts  to  decry  the  regime 
of  peasant  proprietary  in  France.  Lord  Carnarvon’s 
was  the  very  last.  Let  the  Irish  Times  Commissioner’s 
latest  report  be  his  answer. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


Ill 


SWITZERLAND. 

It  is  specially  Switzerland  which  should  be  traversed 
and  studied  to  judge  of  the  happiness  of  peasant  pro¬ 
prietors.* 

In  that  land  of  liberty,  par  excellence,  the  very  air  of 
which  still  circulates  balmy  of  the  breath  of  a  Tell  and  a 
Hofer,t  the  comfort  of  the  peasantry  is  something  to 
gladden  one’s  heart.  “The  whitewashed  cottages,”  says 
Alison  again,  “  with  their  green  doors  and  window- 
shutters,  their  smiling  gardens  and  flowering  orchards, 
the  wTell-clad  figures  of  the  inhabitants,  their  frequent 
herds  and  flocks,  bespeak,  in  language  not  to  be  misunder¬ 
stood,  that  general  well-being  that  can  exist  only  where 
land  has  been  honestly  acquired,  and  virtuous  habits  are 
generally  diffused.”  And  this  reminds  me  of  how  the 
land  has  been  “  acquired  ”  in  Ireland,  and  the  “  habits  ” 
to  which  such  iniquitous  acquisition  has  given  rise.  “So 
dense,”  pursues  he,  “  is  the  population  in  some  districts, 
that  in  five  parishes  and  two  villages  on  the  lake  of 
Zurich  there  are  only  10,400  acres  under  cultivation  of 
every  kind,  and  8,498  souls,  being  scarcely  an  acre  and  a 
quarter  to  each  individual ;  yet,  in  no  part  of  the  world 
is  such  general  comfort  conspicuous  among  the  people — 
an  example,  among  the  many  others  which  history 
affords,  of  the  great  truth  that  it  is  vice  and  oppression 
which  induces  a  miserable  population,  and  that  no  danger 
is  to  be  apprehended  from  the  greatest  increase  in  the 
numbers  of  mankind,  if  they  are  justly  governed,  and 
influenced  by  virtuous  habits.”  I  would  strongly  recom¬ 
mend  English  statesmen  to  ponder  on  these  words  as 
applying  to  Ireland.  As  “just  government”  and  “  vir- 

*  Sismondi,  “Studies  in  Political  Economy,”  quoted  by  Mill, 
b.  2,  c.  vi. 

t  The  Tyrol,  more  strictly  speaking,  for  him 


112 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


tuous  habits”  generally  go  hand  in  hand,  so  vicious 
habits  are,  on  the  part  of  the  governed,  as.  a  rule,  insepar¬ 
able  from  oppression  on  the  side  of  authority.  The  won¬ 
der  is  that,  in  the  case  of  Ireland,  the  disproportion 
between  cause  and  effect  has  been  so  much  in  favor  of 
the  victims  of  misrule. 

And  coming  to  speak  of  Ireland  itself,  the  great  philo¬ 
sophic  historian  sets  down,  among  the  many  causes  of 
Irish  discontent,  “the  unfortunate  circumstance  that 
Ireland  was  not  the  seat,  like  England  or  Gaul,  of  the 
permanent  residence  of  the  victorious  nation ;  that  absent 
proprietors  and  their  necessary  attendants,  middlemen, 
arose  from  the  fact  of  the  kingdom  having  been  subju¬ 
gated  by  a  race  of  conquerors  who  were  not  to  make  it 
their  resting-place ;  and  that  a  different  religion  was  sub¬ 
sequently  embraced  by  the  victors  from  the  faith  of  the 
vanquished,  and  the  bitterness  of  religious  animosity 
superadded  to  the  causes  of  discontent  arising  from  civil 
distinction.”* 

Thus,  different  causes,  different  effects.  In  Prussia, 
Italy,  Switzerland,  France,  the  land,  created  by  the 
Omnipotent  for  the  people,  belonged  to  the  people,  and 
therefore  the  people  defend  their  own  to  the  death.  In 
Ireland  it  was  wrested  from  its  natural  owners  by  the 
iron  hand  of  invasion  and  rapine,  and  has  been  retained 
in  that  hand  by  the  sole  power  of  lead  and  steel,  to  the 
ruin  of  the  entire  community,  and,  therefore,  the  people 
hail  with  ecstacy  every  sign  of  change  that  may  rehabili¬ 
tate  them  in  the  secure  possession  of  what  was  meant  for 
them  by  the  Almighty  Sovereign  Creator. 

Not  that  we  would  suggest  another  “  confiscation.” 
Far  from  us  be  the  thought.  We  have  had  plenty  and 
too  much  of  that  already  in  Ireland  ;  but  that,  no  matter 
liow  brought  about,  such  a  sweeping  revolution  must  be 


*  VI.  205. 


\ 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  113 

effected  in  the  land  tenure  of  Ireland  as  will  for  ever  dis¬ 
sipate  the  agrarian  illusion  reigning  in  high  places,  that 
the  land  was  created  for,  and  therefore  belongs  to,  the 
foreign  few,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  native  many,  and 
that  these  “  foreign  few  ”  “  can  do  what  they  like  with 
their  own.” 

Speaking  of  Zurich,  Mr.  Kay  gives  us  the  following 
information  :  “  The  state  itself  held  vast  estates  in  the 
canton  of  Zurich,  which  it  parcelled  out  in  small  allot¬ 
ments  among  the  peasants,  and  with  the  following  results. 
Very  often  a  third  or  a  fourth  of  the  land  produces  at 
present  as  much  corn  as  supports  as  many  heads  of  cattle 
as  the  whole  estate  formerly  did.”* 

What  is  true  of  Zurich  is  no  less  so  of  every  country 
under  similar  management. 

Of  the  same  Zurich,  H.  D.  Inglis  thus  writes : — 

“  In  walking  anywhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Zu¬ 
rich,”  says  he,  “  in  looking  to  the  right  or  to  the  left, 
one  is  struck  with  the  extraordinary  industry  of  the 
inhabitants,  and  if  we  learn  that  a  proprietor  here  has  a 
return  of  ten  per  cent.,  we  are  inclined  to  say  ‘he  deserves 
it.’  I  speak  at  present  of  country  labor,  though  I  be¬ 
lieve  in  every  kind  of  trade,  also,  the  people  of  Zurich  are 
remarkable  for  their  assiduity  ;  but  in  the  industry  they 
show  in  the  cultivation  of  their  land  I  may  safely  say  they 

are  unrivalled . It  is  impossible  to  look  at  a  field,  a 

garden,  a  hedging,  scarcely  even  a  tree,  a  flower,  or  a 
vegetable,  without  perceiving  proofs  of  the  extreme  care 
and  industry  that  are  bestowed  on  the  cultivation  of  the 
soirt 

What  a  contrast  the  state  of  things,  revealed  in  the 

*  Kay,  ibid.,  quoting  M.  de  Knonan  and  M.  Pupi  Kofer, 
Gemalde  der  Schweitz,  c.  v.  Peraud,  p.  355. 

t  “  Switzerland,  tlie  South  of  France,  and  the  Pyrenees  in  1830,” 
quoted  by  Mill,  ibid. 


II 


114 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


following  sentences,  presents  to  that  of  unhappy  Ireland 
with  its  millions  of  “waste”  acres  of  land :  “The 
country  is  incapable  of  greater  cultivation  than  it  has 
received.  All  has  been  done  for  it  that  industry  and 
extreme  love  of  gain  can  devise.  There  is  not  a  foot  of 
waste  land  in  the  Engadine,  the  lowest  part  of  which  is 
not  much  lower  than  the  top  of  Snowdon.  Wherever 
grass  will  grow,  there  it  is  ;  wherever  a  rock  will  bear  a 
blade,  verdure  is  seen  on  it ;  wherever  an  ear  of  rye  will 
ripen,  there  it  is  to  be  found.”* 

“  It  is,”  says  Sismondi,  “  from  Switzerland  we  learn 
that  agriculture,  practised  by  the  very  persons  who  enjoy 
its  fruits,  suffices  to  procure  great  comfort  for  a  very  nu¬ 
merous  population  ;  a  great  independence  of  character, 
arising  from  independence  of  position  ;  a  great  commerce 
of  consumption,  the  result  of  the  easy  circumstances  of 
all  the  inhabitants,  even  in  a  country  whose  climate  is 
rude,  whose  soil  is  but  moderately  fertile,  and  where  late 
frosts  and  inconstancy  of  seasons  often  blight  the  hopes 
of  the  cultivator.”  And,  after  giving  a  glowing  descrip¬ 
tion  of  the  comfort  that  reigns  both  within  and  without, 
lie  winds  up  with  saying :  “  Let  other  nations  boast  of 
their  opulence,  Switzerland  may  always  point  with  pride 
to  her  peasants.”  And  he  gives  the  reason :  “  The 
peasant  proprietor,”  says  he,  “  is,  of  all  cultivators,  the 
one  who  gets  most  from  the  soil ;  for  he  is  the  one  who 
thinks  most  of  the  future,  and  who  has  been  most  in¬ 
structed  by  experience.  He  is  also  the  one  who  employs 
the  human  powers  to  most  advantage,  because,  dividing 
his  occupations  among  all  the  members  of  his  family,  he 
reserves  some  for  every  day  in  the  year,  so  that  nobody 
is  ever  out  of  work.  Of  all  cultivators  he  is  the  happiest ; 
and,  at  the  same  time,  the  land  nowhere  occupies  and 


*  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


115 


feeds  amply,  without  becoming  exhausted,  so  many  in¬ 
habitants  as  where  they  are  proprietors.  Finally,  of  all 
the  cultivators,  the  peasant  proprietor  is  the  one  who 
gives  most  encouragement  to  commerce  and  manufac¬ 
tures,  because  he  is  the  richest.”* 

El  sewhere  he  thus  illustrates  “  the  magic  of  property 
“  When  we  traverse  nearly  the  whole  of  Switzerland,  and 
several  provinces  of  France,  Italy,  and  Germany,  we  need 
never  ask,  in  looking  at  any  piece  of  land,  if  it  belongs  to  a 
peasant  proprietor  or  to  a  farmer.  The  intelligent  care, 
the  enjoyments  provided  for  the  laborer,  the  adornment 
which  the  country  has  received  at  his  hands,  are  clear 
indications  of  the  former  ”  Yet,  how  the  blessings  result¬ 
ing  from  such  tenure  may  be  thwarted  by  misgov eminent, 
he  shows  as  follows  : — 

“  It  is  true  an  oppressive  government  may  destroy  the 
comfort  and  brutify  the  intelligence  which  should  be  the 
result  of  property ;  taxation  may  abstract  the  best  pro¬ 
duce  of  the  fields  ;  the  insolence  of  government  officers 
may  disturb  the  security  of  the  peasant ;  the  impossi¬ 
bility  of  obtaining  justice  against  a  powerful  neighbor 
may  sow  discouragement  in  his  mind,  and,  in  the  fine 
country  which  has  been  given  back  to  the  King  of  Sar¬ 
dinia,  the  proprietor,  equally  with  the  day  laborer, 
wears  the  livery  of  indigence.”+  For  “  given  back  to  the 
administration  of  the  King  of  Sardinia,”  let  us  substitute 
“  seized  by  the  King  of  England,”  and  fancy  all  the  other 
withering  obstructions  above  enumerated,  together  with 
total  insecurity  of  tenure — no  peasant  proprietary  at  all 
— and  Ireland  is  mapped  before  us. 

Again  and  again,  how  long  is  this  plague  of  ages  to 
endure  1 — the  baneful  result  of  long  misgovernment. 
Will  good  government  step  in  with  its  remedy  at  last  1 

*  Ibid. 

f  “Principles  of  Polit.  Econ.,”  b.  iii.  c.  3,  quoted  by  Mill. 


116 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“This  state  of  things,”  says  Mr.  Binn,  “so  truly  de¬ 
plorable,  is  exclusively  referable  to  the  systematic  course 
of  partiality,  oppression,  and  cruelty  with  which  her  people 
have  been  treated  through  successive  centuries.  And,  if 
it  were  not  my  object  to  represent  the  injuries  which 
have  been  done,  rather  than  dwell  on  the  prospect  of 
good  things  to  come,  I  might,  by  referring  to  authentic 
sources  of  information,  draw  a  series  of  terrific  pictures 
of  persecution,  intolerance,  and  desolation,  to  which  it 
would  be  difficult,  perhaps  impossible,  to  find  parallels  in 
the  history  of  any  nation  not  absolutely  barbarous.  It 
becomes  us,  who  are,  in  some  degree,  responsible  for  the  mis¬ 
deeds  of  our  predecessors,  and  are  certainly  bound  to  repair 
the  evils  they  have  effected,  it  becomes  us,  I  repeat,  to 
bear  constantly  in  mind  that  ever  since  her  connection  with 
Great  Britain,  Ireland  has  been  a  grievously  oppressed 
country ;  that,  for  the  ignoble  purpose  of  extinguishing 
her  religion,  and  seizing  the  property  of  its  votaries,  she 
has  been  deprived  of  those  political  privileges  which 
were  her  birthright,  and  which,  sooner  or  later,  she  will 
possess ;  that,  so  far  from  the  Irish  being  a  turbulent 
people,  they  are  made  so  by  circumstances  under  the  con¬ 
trol  of  England ;  and  that,  dissatisfied  as  they  are  and  have 
been,  the  wrongs  they  have  endured,  the  insults  they  have 
suffered,  would  have  justified  a  course  of  conduct  in¬ 
comparably  more  violent  than  any  which  Ireland  in  her 
wildest  moments,  in  her  fiercest  paroxysms  of  excitement, 
has  displayed.”* 

The  very  sentiment  of  a  writer  in  the  Dublin  Review. 

“  It  was,”  says  Dobbs,  author  of  Priors  “  List  of 
Absentees,”  “  the  keeping  up  the  farm-houses  and  the 
tenures  of  the  yeomanry  in  England  that  was  the  founda- 

*  “The  Miseries  and  Beauties  of  Ireland,”  by  Jonathan  Binn, 
Assistant  Agricultural  Commissioner  on  the  late  Irish  Poor  In¬ 
quiry,  vol.  ii.,  p.  414,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


117 


tion  of  their  improvements  and  industry,  and  of  the  liber¬ 
ties  they  enjoy  under  their  present  liberal  constitution. 

“  The  want  of  this  yeomanry  is  the  principal  evil  to  be 
removed  in  Ireland,  from  whence  most  of  our  incon¬ 
veniences  flow.  It  is  greatly  the  cause  of  our  indolence 
and  inactivity,  and  a  spur  to  our  extravagance.  Could 
I  ever  hope  to  see  oar  nobility  and  gentry  so  generous 
to  their  country,  to  their  posterity,  and,  I  may  say,  to 
themselves,  as  to  fix  the  tenures  and  possessions  of  their 
tenants  on  a  lasting  and  certain  foundation,  by  leases  of 
lives  renewable  or  fee  farms,  I  would  not  doubt  to  find 
our  people  soon  become  industrious  and  frugal  to  the 
utmost.  This  would  occasion  the  improvement  of  our 

land,  and  give  full  employment  to  our  people . 

I  am  sensible  this  proposal  will  be  liable  to  many  diffi¬ 
culties,  and  many  objections  will  be  started  against  it 
by  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  this  kingdom.  The  dis¬ 
couragement  to  improvements  arising  from  our  present 
method  of  letting  our  land,  by  short  leases  of  twenty-one 
years,  is  obvious  to  all.  Places  where  numbers  of 
Papists  are  great,  it  is  plain,  will  never  be  improved  ;  on 
the  contrary,  they  will  rather  endeavor  to  waste  and 
impoverish  the  land,  though  bound  up  by  the  strictest 
ties.  This  is  occasioned  by  the  shortness  of  their  leases. 
We  find  very  little  improvement  made  on  leases  of 
thirty-one  or  forty-one  years.”* 

Si  tale  in  viricli  quid  in  arido.  If  such  be  the  state 
of  the  green  wood,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  dry  V  If 
men  are  Hardly  to  be  expected  to  improve  on  leases  of 
forty-one  years,  what  improvement  can  we  hope  for  at 
their  hands  on  no  lease  or  security  at  all?  Security, 
then,  must  be  obtained,  and  that,  by  either  perpetuities 
at  revaluation  rents,  or,  better  again,  by  peasant 
proprietorship. 

*  Essay  on  the  State  of  Ireland,  Irish  Tracts,  v.  ii. ,  p.  470. 


113 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  YI. 


AUSTRIA,  ITALY,  RUSSIA. 


“  The  tenant  has  land  for  ever  on  paying  the  fixed  duties  to  the  feudal 

superior.” — Infra. 

What  England  has  been  to  Ireland  for  centuries,  Austria 
has  been  to  her  provincial  dependencies,  Italian,  Plun- 
garian,  Polish,  since  the  date  of  that  “  conspiracy  of 
despots,”  the  treaty  of  Vienna.  Yet,  with  all  her  political 
short-comings,  Austria  failed  not  to  attend  to  the  main 
interests  of  her  imperial  rule,  in  the  encouragement  of 
her  rural  industries,  and  her  system  of  rural  economy. 
Reading  the  following  from  Alison,  we  are  carried  back 
to  Inglis  and  Sismondi’s  description  of  Zurich  and  the 
Engantine:  “  The  secret,”  writes  he,  “of  this  remarkable 
well-being  of  Austria  is  to  be  found  in  the  tenure  by 
which  land  is  held,  joined  to  the  just  and  equitable  prin¬ 
ciples  on  which  civil  government  has  long  been  admin¬ 
istered.”  ....  The  tenant  “  is  a  feuar,  in  the  sense  of 
the  Scotch  law — that  is,  he  has  land  for  ever  on  paying 

the  fixed  duties  to  the  feudal  superior . The  real 

right  of  property  remains  with  the  coloni  as  long  as  they 

discharge  their  feudal  duties . The  rules  of  law  in 

relation  to  these  tenants  are  extremely  just  towards  the 
tenants .”  What  a  contrast  to  the  rules  of  law  in  relation 
to  the  tenants  in  Ireland,  as  regards  which  Chief  Justice 
Pennefatlier,  as  we  have  seen,  declared  that  “the 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


119 


WHOLE  CODE  DELATING  TO  LANDLORD  AND  TENANT  IN 
THIS  COUNTRY  WAS  FRAMED  WITH  A  VIEW  TO  THE 
INTERESTS  OF  THE  LANDLORDS  ALONE.  THE  INTERESTS 
OF  THE  TENANTS  NEVER  ENTERED  INTO  THE  CONSIDERA¬ 
TION  OF  the  LEGISLATURE  •”  and  after  entering  into 
certain  details,  commencing  with  9th  Anne,  c.  8,  secs. 
1  and  2,  he  thus  concludes :  “  The  legislation  on  this 

SUBJECT  IS  A  PROGRESSIVE  CODE,  GIVING  IN  EACH  SUC¬ 
CESSIVE  ACT  ADDITIONAL  REMEDIES  TO  THE  LANDLORD.” 
That  is,  in  Austria  “the  rules  of  law  are  extremely  just 
towards  the  tenants in  Ireland  “  the  whole  code  was 
framed  with  a  view  to  the  interests  of  the  landlords  f  and, 
as  a  consequence,  the  Austrian  cultivator  of  the  soil  has 
ever  proved  devotedly  loyal  to  its  fostering  “  rule,”  and 
has  freely  and  loyally  shed  his  blood  in  his  country’s 
defence.  In  Ireland  it  takes  40,000  bayonets  to  keep 
down  the  chronic  spirit  of  insurrection  equally  fostered 
by  the  fell  “  code  of  law”  condemned,  as  above,  by  the 
learned  judge.  Maria  Theresa  it  was  who  inaugurated 
the  freedom  of  agriculture  and  the  independence  of  the 
peasant,  in  the  kingdom,  by  her  famous  urbarium,  or 
land  code,  which  confers  on  the  occupier  a  joint  right 
with  the  owner  in  the  soil — that  “  real  right”  to  which 
Alison  above  refers — for  certain  moderate  equivalents  of 
quit  rents  to  the  crown,  and  labor  to  the  lord  of  the 
manor,  which,  however,  as  Alison  remarks,  the  peasant 
can  “  commute  on  favorable  terms”  for  payment  in 
cash.  Even  more,  by  a  decree  of  the  late  emperor,  as 
we  are  informed  by  Mr.  John  Paget,  “  the  peasants  are 
now  allowed  to  free  their  lands  for  ever  from  all  services 
to  their  landlords  on  payment  of  a  sum  of  money — in 
fact,  to  become  landowners — a  privilege  hitherto  reserved 
exclusively  to  the  nobles — and  to  have  their  land  clear  of 
entail.”  And  he  adds :  “  About  400,000  farms,  at  an 
average  of  forty  acres  each,  has  thus  become  disposable 


120 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


property,  and  nearly  half  a  million  of  families  have  been 
raised  in  the  social  scale.  They  are  no  longer  liable  to 
arbitrary  punishments,  and  cannot  be  imprisoned  except 
on  conviction  before  the  proper  authorities.”*  Thus,  thirty 
years  ago,  did  Austria  break  through  the  last  trammels 
of  agrarian  feudalism,  and  build  up  for  herself  a  loyal, 
because  a  contented  and  independent  people.  The  same 
land  code  obtains  now  throughout  the  Austrian  do¬ 
minions  with  the  happiest  results.  When  shall  the 
geocrats  of  Ireland  cease  to  ring  the  changes  on  the 
“  rights  of  property,”  “  confiscation,”  “  tenant-right ,  land¬ 
lord-wrong f*  Or,  no  more  than  from  other  countries,  will 
they  never  “  learn  lessons  of  wisdom”  from  the  land  laws 
of  the  Austrian  empire  V 


RUSSIA. 

» 

Even  in  what  we,  with  our  usual  British  self-complaceny, 
call  “  despotic  Russia,”  the  condition  of  the  “serf”  is  free¬ 
dom  and  happiness  itself,  as  compared  with  that  of  the 
Irish  rack-rented  tenant-at-will.  In  the  worst  of  bad  and 
rude  times  his  “  noble  master”  was  bound  to  see  him 
well  fed,  well  clad,  and  fairly  housed.  In  due  course, 
over  twenty  years  ago,  the  sovereign  partially  .eman¬ 
cipated  the  serfs  on  the  crown  lands,  and  finally  obliged 
the  nobles  to  follow  his  example,  and  elevate  the  serf 
from  the  condition  of  a  predial  laborer,  which  is  next 
thing  to  an  African  nigger,  to  that  of  an  independent 
tenant,  having  “areal  right,”  as  in  Austria, .to  the  soil 
which  he  tills.  In  Ireland  no  man  can  say  of  an  inch  of 
Irish  soil,  “This  is  my  own,”  except  the  landlord,  that  is, 
about  one  man  in  every  5,000 !  ! — a  state  of  society  jarring 

*  “Hungary  and  Transylvania,”  London,  1839. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


121 


with  tlie  first  principles  of  human  right  and  the  clear 
provisions  of  divine  economy  : 

“  Est  aliquid  quocunque  loco  quocunque  recessu, 
Unius'sese  dominum  fecisse  lacertoe.” 

This  “  aliquid”  of  the  Roman  poet  is  that  “  magic  of  pro¬ 
perty”  which,  according  to  Sismondi  and  Young,  “  turns 
sand  into  gold.”  The  Russian  serf  boasts  of  it  to-day;  how 
much  longer  will  it  be  denied  to  the  Irish  agrarian  slave? 


ITALY. 

No  other  country  in  Europe,  perhaps,  furnishes  within 
itself  a  more  striking  proof  of  the  agricultural  truths 
which  we  have  hitherto  endeavored  to  illustrate,  than 
the  Italian  peninsula,  “  so  blessed  by  God  and  cursed  by 
man,”  like  a  nameless  island.  There  we  find  plenty, 
comfort,  and  happiness  following  in  the  wake  of  minute 
ownership,  minute  cultivation,  and  security  of  tenure  ; 
while  idleness  and  squalid  beggary  are  equally  the  results 
of  mammoth  estates,  consolidated  farms,  and  extensive 
pasturage.  Nowhere  in  the  country  is  the  land  more 
largely  distributed  among  the  people  than  in  Tuscany ; 
and  nowhere  else  in  the  peninsula,  Lucca,  perhaps,  ex¬ 
cepted,  has  there  been  witnessed,  in  spite  of  political 
complications,  so  much  material  prosperity  and  social 
comfort.  Laing  informs  us,  that  among  a  population  or 
1,436,785  there  were,  in  183G,  130,190  landed  estates.* 
In  other  words,  allowing  five  persons  to  each  family,  we 
have  almost  every  second  family  holding  its  land,  as  in 
France,  in  fee.  Of  the  above  130,190  proprietors  there 
are  87,000  whose  land  is  valued  at  only  £5  a  year,  and 


*  “Notes  of  a  Traveller, ’’  p.  459  :  London  1842. 


122 


TIIS  IRISH  LANDLORD 


31,000  the  yearly  value  of  whose  property  is  only  £25. 
“  And,”  asks  Alison,  “  what  has  been  the  consequence  1 
Why,  that  Tuscany  now  exhibits  the  marvellous,  and,  to 
an  economical  observer,  the  highly  interesting  combina¬ 
tion  of  ancient  civilization  with  social  felicity,  of  density 
of  population  with  general  well-being,  of  declining  com¬ 
mercial  prosperity  with  increasing  agricultural  opulence.”* 
Hence,  Laing  asks  us  to  “  compare  the  husbandry  of 

Tuscany,  &e . the  clean  state  of  the  growing 

crop  ....  the  garden-like  cultivation  of  the  whole  face 
of  the  country,  with  the  desert  waste  of  the  Roman 
Maremma”  (30  leagues  in  length,  ten  in  breadth,  with 
only  its  score  of  tenants) — to  “  compare  the  well-clothed, 
busy  people,  the  smart  country  girls  at  work  about  their 
cows’  food,  or  their  silk-worm  leaves — with  the  ragged, 
sallow,  indolent  population,  lounging  about  their  doors, 
in  the  Papal  dominions,  and  with  nothing  to  do  on  the 
great  estates ;  lastly,  (to)  compare  the  agricultural  in¬ 
dustry  and  operations  in  this  land  of  small  farms  with 
the  best  of  our  large-farm  districts,  with  Tweed-side  or 
East  Lothian,  and  (to)  snap  our  fingers  at  the  wisdom  of 
our  Sir  Johns,  and  all  the  host  of  our  book-makers  on 
agriculture,  who  bleat  after  each  other  that  solemn  saw 
of  the  thriving  tenantry-times  of  the  war — that  small 
farms  are  incompatible  with  a  high  and  perfect  state  of 

cultivation . Our  system  of  large  farms  will  gain 

nothing  in  such  comparison  with  the  husbandry  of  Tus¬ 
cany,  Flanders,  or  Switzerland,  under  a  system  of  small 
farms. ’’t  And  elsewhere  he  embodies  the  same  senti¬ 
ment,  m  the  following  language  :  “  A  small  farm,  held, 
not  by  the  temporary  right  of  a  tenant,  or  under  the 
burden  of  a  heavy  rent,  but  by  the  owner  of  the  soil,  and 
cultivated  by  the  labor  of  his  family,  is  precisely  the 

*  “  Hist,  of  Europe,”  v.  163. 

f  “Rotes  of  a  Traveller,”  p.  450. 


SINCE  TIIE  REVOLUTION. 


123 


principle  of  gardening  applied  to  farming;  and  in  the  coun¬ 
tries  in  which  land  has  long  been  occupied  and  cultivated 
in  small  farms  by  the  owners — in  Tuscany,  Switzerland, 
and  Flanders — the  garden-like  cultivation  and  productive¬ 
ness  of  the  soil  are  cried  up  by  these  very  agriculturalists 
and  political  economists  who  cry  down  the  means,  the  only 
means,  by  which  it  can  be  attained  universally  in  a 
country — the  division  of  the  land  into  small  garden-like 
estates,  farmed  by  the  proprietors.”* 

Mr.  Sadleir  is  equally  emphatic  on  the  result  of  minute 
farming,  and,  of  course,  of  security  of  tenure,  in  Tuscany 
and  other,  parts  of  Italy.  Quoting  Chateauvieux’s  de¬ 
scription  of  the  rural  manners  and  economy  of  Italy,  he 
says  :  “The  farms  of  Tuscany  are  not  more  than  from  three 
to  ten  acres.  He  dwells  on  their  extraordinary  produc¬ 
tiveness,  which  he  justly  attributes  to  the  thickly-planted 
habitations.  ”f 

The  following  remarks  I  would  specially  recommend  to 
our  monster  exterminators.  “  He  remarks  upon  the  fatal 
effects  of  depopulation  on  the  happiness  and  prosperity, 
and  especially  the  wealth,  of  various  parts  of  the  penin¬ 
sula  ;  the  latter  he  invariably  connects  with  minute  cul¬ 
tivation  ;  that  where  the  population  disappears,  the  de¬ 
struction  of  the  class  of  consumers  soon  ruins,  in  return, 
that  of  the  producers,  and  contrasts  this  state  of  things 
with  those  districts  where  numbers  create  plenty  and 
prosperity.”  % 

In  connection  with  the  reclamation  of  that  4,600,000 
acres  of  waste,  but  reclaimable,  land  of  Ireland,  the  fol¬ 
lowing  extract  may  be  not  uninteresting  : — 

“  I  wish,”  says  Sadleir,  “  I  could  insert  his  (M.  C.’s) 
beautiful  description  of  the  reclamation  of  the  marsh  in 

*  “Notes  of  a  Traveller,”  pp.  46,  47.  f  “  Ireland,”  &c.,  p.  113. 

Zlbid.,  p.  113-14. 


124 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  Val  di  Chiana,  consisting  of  about  three  thousand 
acres,  belonging  to  the  religious  order  of  St.  Stephen’s. 
It  seemed  most  natural  to  throw  the  whole  into  one 
grand  domain  with  a  suitable  mansion  in  the  centre. 
But  the  Tuscans  knew  better  than  thus  to  consign  it  to 
languor  and  inactivity.  They  divided  it  into  a  number 
of  small  farms,  the  extraordinary  productiveness  of  which 
(for  he  visited  it  in  time  of  harvest),  and  the  happy 
occupation  of  the  numerous  families,  its  inhabitants,  he 
describes  in  a  most  pleasing  manner.  It  just  strikes  me 
-  that  if  the  Protestant  order  of  St.  Stephen’s  in  this  country 
would  follow  the  example  of  the  Italian  one,  and  reclaim 
an  Irish  bog,  by  way  of  trial,  and  thus  parcel  it  out 
among  a  number  of  meritorious  inhabitants,  the  experi¬ 
ment  might  be  better  worth  hazarding,  notwithstanding 
the  uproar  it  certainly  would  create  amongst  the  political 
economists,  than  spending  ten  times  the  sum  in  ex¬ 
patriating  an  equal  number  of  people.”* 

But  no.  Though  M.  Chateauvieux  declares  that  “  Italy 
supplies  the  political  economist  with  lessons  of  wis¬ 
dom,”!  he  of  the  English  order  of  St.  Stephen’s  seems  inca¬ 
pable  of  laying  those  lessons  to  heart.  He,  as  a  rule, 
is  a  landlord  of  the  Irish  type,  utterly  blinded  by  his 
own  pride  and  self-love,  his  antipathies  of  race  and  reli¬ 
gion,  his  sordid  avarice,  and  his  lust  of  exclusive  political 
power,  and  thus  the  plainest  instruction,  furnished  by  ex¬ 
perience  no  less  than  by  common  sense,  is  impervious  to 
his  callous  and  stubborn  intellect.  For  him  there  is  no 
god  but  self,  and  Malthus  is  his  prophet. 

It  would  seem  that  Lucca  even  exceeded  Tuscany  in 
its  agricultural  progress  and  prosperity.  Mr.  Sadleir  says 
of  it :  “  Doubtless  the  little  state  of  Lucca  is  the  most 
densely  populated  independent  district  in  the  civilized 


*  “Ireland,”  &c.,  p.  114. 


t  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


125 


world  (there  was  no  kingdom  of  Italy  then)  .  .  .  There 
are  between  three  and  four  hundred  inhabitants  on  the 
square  mile  throughout.  It  was,  even  in  Addison’s  days, 
the  most  thickly  peopled  state  in  Italy  ;  and  as  the  laws 
of  nature  have  equally  operated  everywhere,  except 
where  they  have  been  withstood,  its  condition  corres¬ 
ponded.  His  description  of  it  is  as  follows :  ‘  It  is  very 
pleasant  to  see  how  the  small  territories  of  this  little  re¬ 
public  are  cultivated  to  the  best  advantage,  so  that  one 
cannot  find  the  least  spot  of  ground  that  is  not  made  to 
contribute  its  utmost  fo  the  owner'  ”  * 

In  Ireland  the  “laws  of  nature  have  been  withstood” 
by  grinding,  imperious  landlords,  supported  by  infamous, 
foreign,  landlord-made  law,  and  the  consequence  is  whole¬ 
sale  misery,  emigration,  depopulation,  with  merited  dis¬ 
content  and  disaffection. 

Mr.  Sadleir  further  quotes  Forsyth  as  stating  that 
“  the  little  state  of  Lucca  is  so  populous  that  very  few 
acres,  and  those  subject  to  inundation,  are  allotted  to  each 
farmer  in  the  plain.  Hence  their  superior  skill  in  agricul¬ 
ture  and  draining,  hence  that  variety  of  crops  in  every 
enclosure,  which  gives  to  the  Yal  Serchio  the  economy 
and  show  of  a  large  kitchen-garden.”  And  he  then 
generalizes  as  follows  :  “Every  state  in  the  Peninsula 
IS  PRODUCTIVE,  OR  OTHERWISE,  IN  PROPORTION  TO  THE 
NUMBER  OF  FARMERS  IN  A  GIVEN  SPACE  OF  LAND, 
EQUALLY  GOOD.”  f 

Next,  after  a  passing  reference  to  Sismondi’s  account 
of  the  agriculture  of  Tuscany,  he  again  quotes  Cha- 
teauvieux,  “  who,”  like  Mr.  Kay,  “  informs  his  readers 
that  he  did  not  traverse  Italy  in  order  to  speak  of  its 
edifices,  its  cities,  its  monuments,  but  to  relate  its  rural 

*  Addison’s  “  Italy,”  p.  308.  Sadleir,  ibid.,  p.  110. 

+  “Remarks  on  Italy,”  quoted,  ibid. 


128 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


history,  and  to  describe  how  its  fields  are  cultivated.” 
And,  prefacing  his  quotations,  Mr.  Sadleir  says  :  “  It 
(M.  C.’s  book)  establishes,  as  it  respects  that  most  in¬ 
teresting  country,  the  fact,  beyond  contradiction,  that 
large  farms,  of  which  there  are  many  of  a  vast  size  in 
Italy,  compared  with  the  small  ones,  of  which,  happily, 
there  are  more,  invariably  exhibit  the  most  slovenly,  im¬ 
perfect,  and  unproductive  cultivation,  while  agriculture  in 
detail  is  invariably  crowned  with  wealth,  plenty,  and 
happiness.”  He  then  quotes  M.  Chateauvieux  as  follows: 

This  system  (of  minute  culture)  possesses  the  advantage 
of  bringing  the  greatest  quantity  of  produce  to  the 
market.  I  make  this  assertion  in  opposition  to  Arthur 
Young,  who  attributes  this  advantage  exclusively  to  large 
farms.  But  from  the  accounts  just  presented  it  is  evident 
that,  in  the  first  place,  the  subdivision  of  farms  increases 
at  the  same  time  the  number  of  plantations,  gardens,  and 
farm-yards,  by  which  means  abundance  of  minor  pro¬ 
duce  is  obtained  which  is  lost  upon  a  large  farm.  I 
am  of  opinion  that  not  any  country  brings  so  large  a 
proportion  of  its  produce  to  market  as  Piedmont.”  (The 
population  in  Piedmont  is  222  to  the  square  mile,  in 
Great  Britain  162.)  “  The  number  of  farms  in  Piedmont 
is  surprising,  and  yet  this  limited  country,  having  a 
great  part  of  its  surface  occupied  by  mountains,  after 
satisfying  its  own  wants,  supplies  the  territories  of 
Genoa,  Nice,  and  even  the  port  of  Toulon,  with  corn 
and  cattle.”  (“  Is  there  anything,”  asks  Mr.  Sadleir, 
“  in  the  way  of  ‘  surplus  produce  ’  like  this,  excepting 
the  instance  of  poor  Ireland  ]  ”)  Chateauvieux  proceeds : 
u  Without  making  an  exact  calculation,  it  is  evident  from 
the  statement  that  there  must  be  a  superfluity  of  produce 
in  the  country,  which  must  be  attributed  to  its  rural  econo¬ 
my  rather  than  to  its  direct  fertility,  for  the  average  return 
of  corn  in  Piedmont  is  not  quite  six  to  one.”  And  that 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


127 


economy  he  explains  as  of  minute  cultivation,  adding : 
“  The  superiority  of  the  agriculture  and  rural  economy 
beyond  that  of  perhaps  any  other  country,  and  the 
phenomena  of  its  great  population  and  extensive  exporta¬ 
tion  of  produce,  will  no  longer  appear  extraordinary.” 
And  let  us  contrast  this  prosperity  with  the  squalid 
misery  of  other  portions  of  Italy,  and  the  secret  becomes 
plainer  still.  “  Why,”  says  Laing,  “  should  the  physical 
and  moral  condition  of  this  population  (that  of  Tuscany, 
equally  applicable  to  Piedmont)  be  so  superior  to  that  of 
the  Neapolitans,  or  the  people  of  the  Papal  States'!  The 
soil  and  climate  and  productions  are  the  same  in  all 
these .  countries.  The  difference  must  be  accounted  for 
by  the  happier  distribution  of  land  in  Tuscany.”*  Thus 
do  we  find  in  the  Italian  peninsula  the  same  striking 
contrast  presented  to  us  in  the  great  German  empire. 
Tuscan}^  Lucca,  Piedmont,  like  Saxony  ,  with  their  small 
fee  or  freehold  farms,  and  their  wonderful  prosperity ; 
Naples  and  the  Maremma,  like  Bohemia,  with  their  large 
estates,  feudal  lords,  and  peasant  serfs,  and  their  poverty 
and  rags.  Added  to  its  agricultural,  came,  in  course  of 
time,  its  political  freedom  to  Piedmont,  and  to-day  its 
sovereign  sways  the  sceptre  of  nearly  all  the  rest. 

“  The  contrast,”  says  a  writer  in  the  Dublin  Review 
(June,  1848),  “  between  the  physical ’and  moral  condition 
of  the  Neapolitan  and  Tuscan  populations  is  most 
striking;  the  latter  are  frugal,  industrious,  and  pro¬ 
vident,  while  the  former  are  reckless,  lazy,  and  im¬ 
poverished.  The  Tuscans  live  in  good  houses,  and  are 
well  clothed  ;  the  habitations  of  the  Neapolitans  are 
mean  and  filthy,  while  the  peasantry  are  clothed  in 
sheep-skins  with  the  wool  on,  and,  notwithstanding  their 
beautiful  climate  and  fruitful  soil,  are  in  a  lower  condi¬ 
tion  than  the  Laplanders.” 


*  “Notes  of  a  Traveller,”  p.  459. 


128 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


As  the  last  and  latest  witness,  and  no  enemy  of  Irish 
landlords,  and  no  advocate  of  “  spoliation,”  let  me 
merely  refer  to  the  present  learned  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Queen’s  Bench,  who  strongly  urges  on  their  class  the 
adoption  of  the  system  which  he  himself  saw  productive 
of  so  much  good  on  the  banks  of  the  Arno.* 

With  all  these  examples  before  their  eyes,  the  Irish 
landlords  persist  in  the  retention  of  their  feudal  mono¬ 
polies.  The  entire  face  of  the  European  continent — its 
darkest  spot  alone,  unhappy  Spain,  excepted — proclaims 
the  almost  self-evident  truth  that  security  of  tenure, 
with  moderate  rents,  and,  much  more  so  still,  minute 
ownership,  and  minute  cultivation,  are  conditions  essen¬ 
tial  to  agricultural  success  ;  yet  will  they  cling  to  their 
ruinous  traditions,  regardless  alike  of  the  calls  of 
humanity,  Christianity,  and  country.  It  has  now,  how¬ 
ever,  become  a  question  of  vital  interest  to  themselves — 
an  alternative  between  their  or  the  people’s  extermina¬ 
tion  on  the  one  side,  or  the  people’s  protection  on  the 
other.  What  their  sense  of  right  and  justice  has  so  long 
failed  to  effect,  their  vulgar  selfishness  may,  in  the  end, 
induce  them  to  accomplish. 

*  Whiteside’s  “Italy.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


1 29 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  CHANNEL  ISLANDS. — NORWAY. 


“  The  happiest  community,”  says  Mr.  Hill,  “  which  it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to 
fall  in  with,  is  to  be  found  in  this  little  island  of  Guernsey.” — Mill's  “  Polil* 
Econ.y"  b.  vi.,  c.  5. 


Returning  from  our  rapid  survey  of  some  of  the 
continental  countries,  what  do  we  discover  still  nearer 
home,  in  the  humble,  unpretending  Channel  Islands  ?  The 
same  effects,  if  possible  in  a  degree  still  more  remarkable 
resulting  from  a  similar  cause.  The  land  belongs  to  the 
people,  and  the  people  “  have  only  to  be  happy/’  The 
soil  is  held  in  small  parcels,  chiefly  in  fee,  cultivated  by 
the  owners  with  spade  and  hoe,  while  the  tenants, 
strictly  so  called,  hold  the  land  in  perpetuity,  at  a  stipu¬ 
lated  rent  determined  by  valuation. 

The  contract,  once  effected,  becomes,  ipso  facto,  per¬ 
manent  as  long  as  the  rent  is  paid.  The  land  thus 
descends  from  sire  to  son  in  the  shape  of  freehold  or 
fee-simple  property.  And  what  is  the  result?  Why, 
that  under  the  sun  there  is  not  more  real  social  and 
domestic  comfort,  and  less  crime.  A  beggar  is  a  pheno¬ 
menon  totally  unknown  there.  Capital  offences  there 
are  never  perpetrated.  There  is  a  steady  progressive 
increase  of  population.  In  Guernsey,  from  having  been 
26,706  in  1841,  it  mounted  to  29,732,  or  nearly  12  per 
cent,  in  ten  years.  While,  in  Jersey,  it  ascended  within 
the  same  time  from  47,556  to  57,155,  or  nearly  20  per 

I 


130 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


cent.;  and  all  this  while  Ireland  was  losing  some  30  per 
cent,  of  her  best  blood — while  that  blood  was  sacrificed 
at  the  shrine  of  political  economy,  and  its  fit  creation 
and  agent — exterminating  landlordism.* 

“  These  islands,  in  fine,”  says  M.  Leonce  de  Lavergne 
in  his  “  Rural  Economy,”  “  to  resume  this  brief  study, 
have  not  to  govern  themselves,  to  provide  themselves 
with  police,  to  defend  themselves — they  have  only  to  be 
happy,  and  that  they  are.”f  “  They  have  only  to  be 
happy  !”  What  a  lot !  How  different  from  that  of  the 
Irish  serf,  who  “  has  only  to  be  miserable  /” 

“  Of  the  efficiency  and  productiveness  of  agriculture  on 
the  small  properties  of  the  Channel  Islands,”  says  Mill, 
“  Mr.  Thornton  produces  ample  evidence,  the  result  of 
which  he  sums  up  as  follows  :  ‘  Thus  it  appears  that,  in 
the  two  principal  Channel  Islands,  the  agricultural 
population  is,  in  the  one  twice,  in  the  other  three 
times  as  dense  as  in  Britain — there  being  in  the  latter 
country  only  one  cultivator  to  every  twenty-two  acres  of 
cultivated  land,  while  in  Jersey  there  is  one  to  eleven, 
and  in  Guernsey  one  to  seven  acres.  Yet  the  agriculture 
of  these  islands  maintains,  besides  cultivators,  non- 
agricultural  populations  respectively  four  times  as  dense 
as  that  of  Britain.  This  difference  does  not  arise  from 
any  superiority  of  soil  or  climate  possessed  by  the  Channel 
Islands,  for  the  former  is,  naturally,  rather  poor,  and  the 
latter  is  not  better  than  in  the  southern  counties  of 
England.  It  is  owing  entirely  to  the  assiduous  care  of 
the  farmers,  and  to  the  abundant  use  of  manure.’  And 
he  then  shows,  from  Mr.  Inglis’s  work,  how  much  greater 
is  the  return  of  wheat  per  acre  out  of  the  small  farms  of 

*  Peraud,  i.,  349,  who  quotes  Dr.  Heylen  and  Mr.  Vincent 
Scully. 

f  Quoted  by  Peraud,  ibid. 

£  “Polit.  Eeon.,”  b.  vi.  c.  7. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


131 


these  islands  than  from  the  mammoth  holds  of  England. 
The  land,  too,  fetches  a  much  higher  price,  while  the 
agricultural  savings,  as  shown  by  the  deposits  in  savings 
banks,  are  much  larger  in  proportion  to  the  population. 

What,  were  the  Irish  land  code  to  have  prevailed  in 
these  happy  isles  for  three  centuries  past  'l  Give  us,  even 
now,  in  Ireland,  a  tenure  and  protection  similar  to  that 
of  Guernsey,  and  watch  the  consequence. 


NORWAY. 

Let  us  now  travel  somewhat  northward,  and  witness 
what  obtains  in  the  half-polar  regions  there.  Mr.  Laing 
thus  describes  it : — 

“  In  Norway  the  land  is  parcelled  out  into  small 
estates,  affording  a  comfortable  subsistence,  and,  in  a 
moderate  degree,  the  elegancies  of  life,  but  nothing  more. 
With  a  population  of  910,000  inhabitants,  about  the 
year  1819,  there  were  41,656  estates.  In  Norway  the 
law  of  succession  prevents  property  from  being  accumu¬ 
lated  in  large  masses.  The  estates  of  individuals  are 
generally  small,  and  the  houses,  furniture,  food,  comforts, 
ways  and  means  of  living,  of  all  classes,  appear  to  approach 
more  nearly  to  an  equality  to  one  standard  than  in  any 
other  country  in  Europe.  This  standard*  is  far  removed 
from  any  want  or  discomfort  on  one  hand,  or  from  any 
luxury  or  display  on  the  other.  The  actual  partition  of 
the  land  itself  seems  in  practice  not  to  go  below  such  a 
portion  of  land  as  will  support  a  family  comfortably, 
according  to  the  habits  and  notions  of  the  country.”* 
“The  habits  and  notions”  of  this  country  happen  to  be 
of  a  different  order — the  same  precisely  as  those  “  habits 


*  “  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  Norway.” 


132 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


and  manners”  of  ancient  Rome  and  other  plethoric 
nations,  which  ended  in  their  ruin  and  disruption. 

According  to  this  eminent  writer,  there  was  in  Norway, 
in  1819,  41,656  landed  estates,  among  a  population  of 
910,000.  In  Ireland,  with  six  times  the  population,  we 
have  only  8,000  or  10,000  “  owners”  of  the  soil. 

He  sums  up  the  results  of  his  observations  in  the 
following  paragraphs : — 

“  First — That  the  structure  of  society  in  which, 
through  the  effects  of  the  natural  law  of  succession  in 
equal  shares,  there  is  a  very  general  diffusion  of  property 
among  all  classes  and  individuals,  is  better  calculated  for 
the  ends  of  all  society — the  producing  the  greatest 
possible  quantity  of  well-being  and  happiness  to  the 
greatest  number  of  persons — than  that  structure  in  which 
the  possession  of  property,  by  the  operation  of  an  arti¬ 
ficial  law  of  succession,  such  as  the  feudal  law  of  primo¬ 
geniture,  is  restricted  to  particular  classes  and  individuals 
among  the  families  of  the  community. 

“  Second — That  the  influence  of  property  upon  the 
human  mind,  the  never-ceasing  propensity  to  acquire  and 
to  save,  and  the  equally  strong  propensity  to  indulge  in 
the  tastes  and  habits  generated  by  property,  form  the  real 
checks  which  nature  has  intended  for  restraining  the  pro¬ 
pensity  to  propagation  by  improvident  marriages,  and  for 
preventing  the  population  of  a  country  from  exceeding 
the  means  and  property  on  which  it  is  to  subsist ;  conse¬ 
quently  the  diffusion  of  property  through  society  is  the  only 
cure  for  that  king’s  evil  of  all  feudally  constructed  socie¬ 
ties,  pauperism  and  over-multiplication.  -  Consequently, 
the  idea  of  bolstering  up  this  unnatural  structure  of  society, 
as  proposed  by  Dr.  Chalmers  and  other  eminent  political 
economists,  by  inculcating  in  the  minds  of  the  laboring 
classes  a  fictitious  moral  restraint  upon  marriage — an  act 
which  may  be  eminently  improvident,  but  can  never  be  . 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


133 


designated  as  immoral,  without  confounding  together  pru¬ 
dence  and  morality,  and  overturning  all  the  landmarks  of 
human  virtue — is  as  contrary  to  political  as  it  is  to  moral 
principle. 

“ Third — That,  for  the  admitted  evil  condition  of  the 
vast  population  of  Ireland,  there  is  no  other  effectual 
remedy  than  an  alteration  in  the  law  of  succession  to 
property,  by  which,  without  injury  to  the  just  existing 
rights  of  any  living  individual,  the  succeeding  generations 
in  that  country  would  become  gradually  connected  with 
its  property — inoculated  and  imbued  with  the  curbing 
tastes,  habits,  and  influences  thence  arising,  and  their  in¬ 
crease  of  numbers  thus  placed  under  the  restraint  of  the 
only  natural  and  effective  check  which  Providence  has 
imposed  upon  the  tendency  of  the  population  to  exceed 
the  means  of  subsistence.”* 

Sound  and  profound  reasoning.  Let  us  ask  again, how 
long  until  it  makes  its  way  through  the  murky  atmos- 
pheie  of  Irish  territorial  exclusiveness  and  monopoly  1 

For  further  information  on  Flemish  agricultural  pro- 
gress;  as  also  on  that  of  Switzerland,  Norway,  Germany, 
the  Channel  Islands,  and  France,  as  the  result  of  security 
of  tenure  and  peasant  proprietorship,  we  would  refer  the 
reader  to  Mr.  Mill’s  “  Treatise  on  Political  Economy.” 
He  quotes  from  Sismundi  (“Studies  of  Political  Economy” 
and  “  New  Principles  of  Political  Economy”),  from  H. 
D.  Inglis  (“  Switzerland,  the  South  of  France,  and  the 
Pyrenees”),  from  W.  Howitt  (“  Pural  and  Domestic  Life 
of  Germany”),  from  Dr.  Karl  Heinrich  Eau  (“  Agricul¬ 
ture  of  the  Palatinate”),*  from  Thaer  (“Principles  of 
Kational  Agriculture”),  from  McCulloch’s  “  Geographical 
Dictionary”  (art.  Belgium,  Flemish  Husbandry,  &c.), 
from  Niebuhr’s  “  Life  and  Letters,”  whose  testimony 
touching  the  Campagna  I  requote  :  “  Wherever  you 

*  Ibid. 


I 


134 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


find  hereclit  ary  farmers  or  small  proprietors,  there  you 
also  find  industry  and  honesty.  I  believe  that  a  man 
who  would  employ  a  large  fortune  in  establishing  small 
freeholds  might  put  an  end  to  robbery  in  the  mountain 
districts,”*  &c.  As  well  as  from  Sir  Arthur  Young 
(“Travels  in  France”),  Thornton,  Laing,  Kay,  cited  above; 
and  they  concur  in  extolling  the  system  of  petite  culture , 
security  of  tenure,  and  especially  of  peasant  ownership. 
Sir  Arthur  Young  says,  in  reference  to  the  farms  of  French 
Flanders,  that  they  “are  all  small  and  much  in  the  hands 
of  little  proprietors.”  He  proceeds:  “  In  Bearn  I  passed 
through  a  region  of  little  farmers,  whose  appearance, 
neatness,  ease,  and  happiness  charmed  me  ;  it  was  what 
property  alone  could,  on  a  small  scale,  effect.”f  While 
of  the  island  of  Guernsey,  Hill,  quoted  by  Kay,  calls  the 
inhabitants  “  the  happiest  community  that  it  ever  has 
been  my  lot  to  fall  in  with.”  “No  matter,”  says  Sir 
George  Head,  “  to  what  point  the  traveller  may  bend 
his  way,  comfort  everywhere  prevails.”;};  “  When  the 
land  is  cultivated  entirely  by  the  spade,  and  no  horses 
are  kept,  a  cow  is  kept  for  every  three  acres  of  land,  and 
entirely  fed  on  artificial  grasses  and  roots.  This  mode  of 
cultivation  is  adopted  in  the  Waes  district,  where  pro¬ 
perties  are  very  small. ”§  “  The  natural  soil  consists 

almost  wholly  of  barren  sand,  and  its  great  fertility  is 
entirely  the  result  of  skilful  management  and  the  judi¬ 
cious  application  of  various  manures.”|| 

To  all  the  above  mass  of  evidence  what  is  the  reply  of 
the  feudal  lords  and  the  consolidators'?  Merely  the  gratui¬ 
tous  assertion  that  such  a  system  of  farming  does  not  suit 
Ireland,  while  such  a  tenure  would  be  subversive  of  “the 
rights  of  property.”  But  these  mere  assertions  are  mani¬ 
festly  negatived  by  experience,  as  they  are  rejected  by 

*  Vol.  ii.,  p.  149.  t  Mill,  p.  170. 

§  M‘Culloch  quoted,  p.  165. 


t  lb.  p.  167. 

II  lb.  p.  161.  *• 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


135 


common  sense.  If  security  of  tenure  and  minute  or 
moderate  cultivation  be  best  for  a  poor  soil — convert  it 
into  a  soil  rich  and  productive— surely  the  same,  a  fortiori, 
cannot  fail  to  be  most  profitable  for  such  a  soil  as  that 
of  Ireland,  whose  productiveness,  we  have  seen,  exceeds 
that  of  Scotland,  and  even  of  England  itself.  No,  this  is 
not  the  real  objection.  The  greed  of  absolute  power, 
joined  to  the  evil  spirit  of  national  and  religious  hate,  is 
the  real  secret  of  the  opposition  to  such  rational  and  in¬ 
evitable  changes.  How  long,  we  repeat,  is  this  feudal 
opposition  to  last  1 


136 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

SPAIN. 


“  They  ^travellers)  extol  the  fruitfulness  of  a  soil  which  yielded  the  products 
of  the  most  opposite  climes  ;  the  hills  clothed  with  vineyards  and  plantations  of 
fruit  trees,  much  mere  abundant,  it  would  seem,  in  the  northern  regions  than  at 
the  present  day;  the  valleys  and  delicious  vegas  glowing  with  the  rich  luxu¬ 
riance  of  southern  vegetation,  extensive  districts  now  smitten  with  the  curse  of 
barrenness,  where  the  traveller  scarce  discerns  the  vestige  of  a  road  or  of  a 
human  habitation,  but  which  then  teemed  with  all  that  was  requisite  to  the 
sustenance  of  the  populous  cities  in  their  neighborhood.— History  of  the  Reign 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  by  William  H.  Prescott,  part  il,  c.  26. 


Such  was  Spain  in  the  zenith  of  her  fame,  her  power, 
and  her  greatness — the  Spain  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella 
and  their,  two  immediate  successors.  Of  the  more  modern 
Spain  the  same  classic  pen  furnishes  the  following  lugu¬ 
brious  picture:-- 

“The  inhabitant  of  modern  Spain  or  Italy,  who  wan¬ 
ders  amid  the  ruins  of  their  stately  cities,  their  grass- 
grown  streets,  their  palaces  and  temples  crumbling  into 
dust,  their  massive  bridges  choking  up  the  streams  they 
once  proudly  traversed,  the  very  streams  themselves 
which  bore  navies  in  their  bosoms,  shrunk  into  too  narrow 
a  channel  for  the  meanest  craft  to  navigate — the  modern 
Spaniard,  who  surveys  these  vestiges  of  a  giant  race,  the 
tokens  of  his  present  degeneracy,  must  turn  for  relief  to 
the  prouder  and  earlier  period  of  her  history,  when,  only, 
such  great  works  could  be  achieved.  .  .  .  Such  a  period 
in  Spain  cannot  be  looked  for  in  the  last,  still  less  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  for  the  nation  had  then  reached  the 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


137 


lowest  ebb  of  its  fortunes ;  nor  in  the  close  of  the  six¬ 
teenth,  for  the  desponding  language  of  Cortes  shows  that 
the  work  of  decay  and  depopulation  had  then  already 
begun.”* 

“  The  work  of  depopulation  ”  commenced  with  the 
capture  of  Granada,  in  1491,  and  the  consequent  inhu¬ 
man  wholesale  expulsion  of  the  Moors  and  Jews — the 
former  to  the  number  of  two  millions  and  a  half,  the 
latter  to  the  figure  of  half  a  million — the  first  step  in  that 
downward  march  of  hers,  which  seems  to  have  reached  its 
lowest  depths  in  the  insurrection  which  rages  at  this 
hour,  the  second  within  the  year. 

Accounts  of  the  agricultural  condition  of  Spain  are 
very  confiicting  •  yet  in  the  very  conflict  of  evidence  wre 
still  discern  the  important  truth,  that  whatever  of  evil 
exists  in  the  rural  condition  of  the  Peninsula  has  arisen 
from  consolidation,  grazing,  and  monopoly  of  land  in  the 
hands  of  a  few.  Strangely  enough,  Alison  describes  “the 
peasantry”  as  “ bold, prosperous,  and  independent,” while 
in  the  next  breath  he  tells  us  that  “  the  decay  of  its 
(Spain’s)  national  strength,  falsely  ascribed  by  superficial 
writers  to  the  drain  of  colonial  enterprise,  and  the  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  mines  of  America,  was  really  owing  to  the 
accumulation  of  estates  in  the  hands  of  communities  and 
noble  families,  and  the  predominant  influence  of  the 
Catholic  priesthood,  which  for  centuries  had  rendered 
that  fine  kingdom  little  else  than  a  cluster  of  convents, 
surrounded  by  a  hardy  peasantry .”+  However,  touching 
the  latter  cause,  we  may  hear  the  diligent  historian  reply  to 
himself.  “But,”  writes  he,  “  the  peasantry,  hardy  and  un¬ 
daunted  as  they  were,  would  have  been  unable  to  have 

*  Prescott,  “  History  of  the  P^eign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,’7 
partii.,  c.  20, 

f  “  Hist,  of  Europe,77  vol.  iii.,  p.  142. 


138 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


combined  in  any  effective  league  for  their  common  defence, 
destitute,  as  they  for  the  most  part  were,  of  any  support 
from  their  natural  leaders,  the  owners  of  the  soil,  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  weight  and  influence  of  a  body  which  in 
every  age  has  borne  a  leading  part  in  the  contests  of  the 
Peninsula.  This  was  the  Church,  the  lasting  and  in¬ 
veterate  enemy,  in  every  country,  of  revolutionary  inno¬ 
vation.”  The  author  is  obliged  to  differ  from  Alison 
as  to  this  inveterate  enmity  of  the  Church  to  revolution. 
It  is  notorious  that  it  was  the  Belgian  Church  that  made 
the  revolution  of  1830.  Catholic  priest  conspired  with 
radical,  nay,  infidel,  layman,  to  drive  the  tyrannical 
Dutchman  back  to  his  dikes,  to  repent,  when  too  late,  of 
his  imperious  attempt  to  impose  his  own  religion  on  the 
one,  and  his  own  language  on  both  A 

“  The  ecclesiastics  in  Spain  were  very  numerous,  amount¬ 
ing,  according  to  the  census  taken  in  1787,  to  22,480  parish 
priests,  and  47,710  regular  clergy,  belonging  to  monas¬ 
teries  or  other  religious  establishments.  The  influence 
of  this  great  body  was  immense.  Independent  of  their 
'  spiritual  ascendency,  in  a  country  more  strongly  attached 
than  any  in  Europe  to  the  Bomish  Church,  they  possessed 
as  temporal  proprietors  unbounded  sway  over  their  flocks. 
As  in  all  other  countries,  it  had  long  been  felt  that  the 
Church  was  the  best  and  most  indulgent  landlord ;  the 
ecclesiastical  states,  which  were  very  numerous  and  ex¬ 
tensive,  were  much  better  cultivated,  in  general,  than  any 
in  the  hands  of  lay  proprietors  ;  and  the  tenants  held 
their  possessions  under  them  at  such  moderate  rents,  and 
by  so  secure  a  tenure ,  that  they  had  long  enjoyed  almost 
the  advantages  and  consideration  of  actual  landlords. 

“  Nor  was  this  all :  the  charity  and  beneficence  of  the 
monks  had  set  on  foot  in  every  part  of  the  country  ex- 

*  See  “  Historical  and  Political  Essay  on  the  Belgian  Revolu¬ 
tion,”  by  Horthumb.  Brussels,  1834. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


139 


tensive  institutions,  through  which,  more  than  any 
others  by  which  they  could  be  effected,  the  distresses  of 
the  poor  had  been  relieved.  They  partook,  in  a  great 
degree,  of  the  character  of  the  hospice,  particularly  in  the 
northern  provinces.  To  the  peasant  they  often  served 
as  banking  establishments,  where  none  other  existed  in 
the  province,  and  as  such  essentially  contributed  to  agri¬ 
cultural  improvement.  The  friars  acted  as  schoolmasters, 
physicians,  and  apothecaries.  Besides  feeding  and  cloth¬ 
ing  the  poor  and  visiting  the  sick,  they  gave  spiritual 
consolation.  They  were  considerate  landlords  and  in¬ 
dulgent  masters.”*  Yet  the  author  of  these  just  and 
flattering  encomiums  had  previously  informed  us  that 
“  the  decay  of  national  strength”  was,  among  other 
causes,  “to  be  ascribed  to  the  predominant  influence  of  the 
Catholic  priesthood” — those  “schoolmasters,  advocates, 
physicians,  apothecaries,  considerate  landlords,  good  mas¬ 
ters,  peace-makers  in  domestic  broils,  and  props  of  sup¬ 
port  in  family  misfortunes  ! !  ” 

After  describing,  in  terms  the  opposite  of  the  foregoing, 
the  corruption  of  the  nobility,  “  assembled  for  the  most 
part  in  the  capital,  devoted  to  the  frivolities  of  fashion 
or  the  vices  of  a  court ;  taught  to  look  for  the  means  of 
elevation,  not  in  the  energy  of  a  virtuous,  but  in  the  in¬ 
trigues  of  a  corrupted  life;”  he  thus  sketches  the  con¬ 
dition  of  the  peasantry — no  doubt,  not  of  these  effeminate 
and  degenerate  and  absentee  hidalgoes  and  ricos  hombres , 
as  the  two  grades  of  nobility  were  designated,  but  of  the 
Church. 

First  he  states  the  result  of  land  monopoly  as  follows : — 

“  The  original  evil  of  entails  had  spread  to  a  greater 
extent  and  produced  more  evil  consequences  in  Spain 
than  in  any  other  country  of  Europe.  A  few  great  fami¬ 
lies  engrossed  more  than  half  the  landed  property  of  the 

*  “Hisfc.  of  Europe,”  voL  xii.,  p.  12. 


140 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


kingdom,  which  was  effectually  tied  up  from  alienation, 
and  of  course  remained  in  a  very  indifferent  state  of 
cultivation  ;  while  the  domains  of  the  cities  or  corporate 
bodies  held  in  mortmain,  and,  for  the  most  part,  uncul¬ 
tivated,  were  so  extensive,  that  a  large  proportion  of  the 
arable  land  in  the  kingdom  still  remained  in  a  state  of 
nature. 

“Notwithstanding  these  unfavorable  circumstances,  the 
elements  of  great  political  activity  and  energetic  national 
conduct  existed  in  the  Peninsula.  The  peasantry  were 
everywhere  an  athletic,  sober,  enduring  race ;  hardy 
from  exercise,  abstemious  from  habit,  capable  of  under¬ 
going  incredible  fatigue,  and  of  subsisting  on  a  fare  which 
to  an  Englishman  would  appear  absolute  starvation.  . 
The  Valencian  and  Andalusian  levies  presented  a  physi¬ 
cal  appearance  greatly  exceeding  that  of  both  the  French 
and  English  regular  armies.  The  cause  of  this  remark¬ 
able  peculiarity  is  to  be  found  in  the  independent  spirit 
and  general  well-being  of  the  peasantry. 

“  Notwithstanding  all  their  government  and  institu¬ 
tions,  the  shepherds  and  cultivators  of  the  soil  enjoyed  a 
most  remarkable  degree  of  prosperity.  Their  dress,  their 
houses,  their  habits  of  life  demonstrated  the  long  estab¬ 
lished  comfort  which  had  for  ages  prevailed  among 
them;”  and  he  thus  furnishes  the  secret  in  the  “magic 
of  property “  Vast  tracts,  particularly  in  the  mountain¬ 
ous  regions  of  the  north,  were  the  property  of  the 
cultivator^— a  state  of  things  of  all  others  the  most 
favorable  to  social  happiness,  when  accompanied  with  a 
tolerable  degree  of  mildness  in  the  practical  administra¬ 
tion  of  government ;  and  even  in  those  districts  where 
they  were  merely  tenants  of  the  nobility,  the  cities,  or 
the  Church,  their  condition  demonstrated  that  they  were 
permitted  to  retain  an  ample  share  of  the  fruits  of  the  soil.” 

He  adds  :  “  The  general  comfort  of  the  Spanish  pea- 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


141 


santry,  especially  in  tlie  northern  and  mountainous  pro¬ 
vinces,  is  easily  explained  by  the  number  of  them  who 
were  owners  of  the  soil,  coupled  with  the  vigor  and 
efficacy  of  the  provincial  immunities  and  privileges  which, 
in  Catalonia,  Navarre,  the  Basque  Provinces,  Asturias, 
Arragon,  and  Gallicia,  effectually  restrained  the  power  of 
the  executive,  and  gave  to  the  inhabitants  of  those  pro¬ 
vinces  the  practical  enjoyment  of  almost  complete  per¬ 
sonal  freedom.  So  extensive  were  their  privileges,  so 
little  did  government  venture  to  disregard  them,  that  in 
many  cases  those  enjoying  them  were  to  be  rather  con¬ 
sidered  as  democratic  commonwealths,  inserted  into  that 
extraordinary  assemblage  of  separate  states  which  formed 
the  Spanish  monarchy,  than  as  subjects  of  a  despotic 
monarchy.  The  classification  of  the  people  was  as  in  the 
note  below,*  which  speaks  volumes  as  to  the  condition 
of  the  people  and  the  causes  of  their  prolonged  resistance 
to  the  French  invasion.  ”t 

So  far  Alison,  who  cites  many  respectable  authorities 
for  his  conclusions.  These  may  be  easily  admitted  as 
regards  the  peasant-proprietor  estates  ;  but  touching  the 
others — the  latifundia — a  more  modern  writer  holds 
very  different  views.  The  discrepancy,  however,  may 
be  accounted  for  by  supposing  the  historian  to  have  re¬ 
ferred  mainly  to  the  northern  provinces,  as  he  did,  while 
the  essayist  had  the  central  and  southern  chiefly  in 
view. 


*Note. — Total  inhabitants,  ....  10,409,879 

Families  engaged  in  agriculture,  -  -  872,000 

Owners  of  the  soil  they  tilled,  -  -  360, 000 

Farmers  holding  under  landlords,  -  502,000 

Ecclesiastical  proprietors,  -  -  -  6,216 

Parish  priests,  -  22,408 

Regular  clergy, . 47,710 

f  “Hist,  of  Europe.”  Ibid.  pp.  11,  12. 


142 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


The  following  brief  description  is  from  a  pen  the  ac¬ 
curacy  of  which  cannot  be  questioned  when  dealing  in 
such  a  strain  with  a  Spanish  question.  “In  Spain,” 
writes  an  author  in  the  Dublin  Review ,  “the  large  estates 
are  strictly  entailed  and  badly  cultivated ;  the  peasantry 
are  indolent  and  poor.  The  vast  possessions  are  gene¬ 
rally  managed  by  stewards,  and  the  middle  class  of 
agriculturists  has  no  existence ;  though  the  soil  is  every¬ 
where  fertile,  it  is,  generally  speaking,  most  unskilfully 
managed,  and  often  abandoned  to  the  caprice  of  nature. 
Nothing  can  be  more  painful  than  to  behold  this  fine 
country,  which  rose  to  such  a  degree  of  prosperity  under 
the  Romans  and  the  Arabs,  now  so  fallen  and  so  impove¬ 
rished.  The  principal  source  of  its  degradation  may  be  found 
in  the  landed  monopolies ,  nearly  the  whole  country  being 
owned  by  large  proprietors ,  to  whose  ancestors  it  icas  granted 
at  the  time  of  the  Conquest.  They  who  preach  the  preser¬ 
vation  of  families  and  estates,  and  deprecate  the  subdivi¬ 
sion  of  property,  should  make  a  journey  to  Andalusia, 
which  immense  province  is  said  to  belong  almost  entirely 
to  the  Dukes  of  Ossuna,  Alba,  and  Medina  Coli.”  Ex¬ 
cept  that  in  Spain  the  ancestors  of  these  “  large  proprie¬ 
tors”  wpre  Spaniards  themselves  and  also  Catholics,  the 
confiscations  in  their  favor  remind  one  powerfully  of  what 
took  place  in  Ireland,  and  with  similar  but  aggravated 
results. 

But  let  us  hear  a  Spaniard  himself  speak  on  these 
results  of  consolidation,  and,  in  consequence,  of  neg¬ 
lected  agriculture.  Don  Guspard  Melchior  Jovellanos, 
ci-devant  ministre  cle  grace  et  de  justice  et  membre  du 
Conseil  d’Etat  de  S.  A.  Catholique,  wrote  a  book,  over 
sixty  years  ago,  entitled,  “  Dldentite  de  V  inter  et  general 
avec  Tinteret  individuel  est  la  vrai  source  des  richesses  des 
nations.  Principe  expose  clans  le  rapport  sur  un  projet 
de  loi  agraire  aclressS  an  Conseil  Supreme  de  Castille  au  nom 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


143 


de  la  Society  Economique  de  Madrid .”  And  this  I  find 
gravely  noticed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review ,  from  which  I 
cull  the  following  extracts.  After  giving  a  history  of 
Spanish  agriculture  from  the  time  of  the  Romans  to  his 
own  day,  and  exposing  several  of  the  existing  abuses  in 
connection  with  land  in  the  country,  he  comes  to  deal 
with  the  pastural  society  known  as  the  Mesta,  which,  it 
would  seem,  might  be  termed  “  a  mutual  protection 
society  of  mountain  and  lowland  shepherds,  as  against 
the  cultivators  of  the  soil,”  and  says :  “  This  unequal 
league,  disadvantageous  to  the  former,  who  went  on 
declining,  while  the  favor  (shown)  and  the  means  of 
the  latter  increased  day  by  day,  became  very  fatal  to 
the  public  interest,  because  it  united  the  riches  and  the 
credit  of  the  lowlanders  (riverains)  with  the  industry  and 
numbers  of  the  mountaineers,  and  produced,  in  the  end, 
a  body  of  shepherds  so  enormously  powerful,  that,  by 
force  of  sophistry  and  representations,  it  not  alone  came 
to  hold  a  monopoly  of  the  entire  grass  of  the  Peninsula, 
but  it  further  succeeded  in  turning  into  pasture  the  best 
tillage  land,  to  the  great  loss  of  the  local  flocks,  of 
agriculture,  and  of  the  rural  population.”  Let  us  put 
“ grass  farmers,”  with  “their  wealth  and  credit,”  for 
<£  shepherds “  political  economy,”  of  the  Malthusian 
and  McCulloch  stamp,  for  “  sophistical  representations 
“the  whole  island”  for  “the  Peninsula,”  and  we  have 
the  state  of  Ireland  in  a  nutshell. 

He  proceeds  :  “  Another  abuse,  more  serious]  more 
urgently  demanding  redress,  more  pernicious  to  agricul¬ 
ture,  demands  the  actual  supreme  attention  of  the 
council.  We  would  not  witness  amongst  us  such  anxiety 
to  belong  to  the  fraternity  of  the  Mesta  if  our  laws,  in 
facilitating,  on  the  one  side,  the  accumulation  of  riches  in 
the  hands  of  a  small  number  of  powerful  individuals,  did 
not,  at  the  same  time,  authorize,  on  the  other  side,  the 


144 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


accumulation  of  territorial  wealth  in  favor  of  these  same 
companies  and  these  same  persons,  thus  separating,  more 
and  more,  individual  interest  from  the  economy  of  the 
flocks  and  from  agriculture,  they  turn  aside  the  sources 
of  the  nation’s  industry,  whereby  they  (the  laws)  should 
be  animated.”  .  .  .  .  “  As  it  is  impossible  to  favor 
individual  interests,  in  giving  them  a  right  to  aspire  to 
the  acquisition  of  territorial  property,  without,  at  the 
same  time,  favoring  the  accumulation  of  this  wealth,  it 
is  equally  impossible  to  suppose  this  accumulation,  with¬ 
out  recognizing  this  inequality  of  fortune  which  con¬ 
stitutes  the  real  origin  of  so  many  vices  and  evils  that 
afflict  the  body  politic.  In  this  sense  we  cannot  deny 
but  the  accumulation  of  riches  is  an  evil ;  but,  though 
otherwise  a  necessary  evil,  its  remedy  is  not  far  distant. 
When  every  citizen  may  aspire  to  riches,  the  natural 
vicissitudes  of  fortune  make  it  pass  from  one  to  another; 
consequently,  it  can  never  be  immense,  either  in  quantity 
or  duration,  with  any  individual. 

“  On  the  other  hand,  equality  of  rights  brings 
assurance  of  salutary  effects.  It  is  it  that  places  the 
different  classes  of  the  state  in  a  state  of  mutual 
dependence.  It  is  it  that  unites  them  with  the  powerful  bond 
of  mutual  interest.  It  is  this  gradation  that  invites  the 
humblest  citizen  to  wealth  and  honor.  It  is  it  that 
awakens  and  stimulates  personal  interest,  which  inspires 
its  action  with  so  much  the  greater  strength,  that 
equality  of  rights  holds  out  for  all  hopes  of  success.  It 
is,  then,  those  laws  that  will  occupy  with  profit  the  atten¬ 
tion  of  the  society.”* 

And  to  repeat  it :  “It  is  such  laws  of  equal  rights  for 
all,  favor  for  none ,  that  will  usefully  occupy  the  attention 
of  patriots  and  statesmen”  in  Ireland  as  in  Spain. 


*  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1S09. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


145 


Hitherto,  as  we  have  seen,  all  the  laws  have  been  framed 
in  the  interest  of  “  a  few  powerful  individuals.”  The 
result  is  much  the  same  as  in  Spain — squalid  misery  and 
consequent  discontent  among  the  masses — -selfishness  in 
the  few,  weakness  in  the  nation. 

As  the  result  of  entail,  he  tells  us  that  “  lands  are 
gone  up  in  Spain  to  a  scandalous  price.  This  price  is  a 
result  of  their  scarcity  in  the  market,  and  this  scarcity 
comes  chiefly  from  the  enormous  quantity  of  it  that  has 
fallen  into  mortmain.”  .  .  .  “  These  are  the  afflicting  but 
certain  consequences  of  a  destructive  system,  the  effects 
of  which  the  Council  will  perceive  by  casting  its  eyes 
over  our  provinces.  What  is  it,  where  the  greater  part 
of  territorial  property  has  not  fallen  into  mortmain?  What 
is  it,  where  leases  have  not  mounted  to  a  scandalous  price? 
What  is  it,  where  inheritances  are  not  open — without 
population,  without  trees,  without  watering,  and  without 
any  kind  of  improvement?  What  is  it,  where  agriculture 
is  not  abandoned  to  poor  and  ignorant  tenants  ?  What 
is  it,  in  fine,  where  numbers  do  not  fly  from  the  fields  to 
find  more  lucrative  employment  elsewhere  ?”  And,  for 
Ireland,  let  us  ask,  “  What  is  it,  where  the  millions  live 
from  year  to  year  at  the  mercy  of  a  set  of  men  whose 
natural  hard-heartedness  is  intensified  by  political,  reli¬ 
gious,  and  national  animosities?”  ' 

Commenting  on  the  subject  of  tenure,  the  reviewer 
himself  makes  the  following  wholesome  reflections : 
“  How  feeble,  in  all  cases,  must  be  the  motives  for  exer¬ 
tion  and  expense  to  increase  the  productive  powers  of  the 
soil,  where  a  man  daily  regards  it  as  the  property  of 
another,  and  reflects  that  the  produce  only  of  a  few  years 
(one  year)  must  be  the  sole  reward  of  his  labors  and 
risk,  while  the  permanent  benefit  departs  from  him  to  a 
stranger  I  How  feeble,  even  in  their  most  perfect  form, 
the  motives  of  this  man  to  the  motives  of  him  who 


K 


146 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


regards  the  soil  he  is  improving  as  his  own,  and  considers 
that  the  benefit  of  his  exertions  may  redound  to  his 
latest  posterity  !  What  other  cause  can  be  assigned  for 
the  small  progress  which  England  has  made  in  agricul¬ 
ture,  compared  with  that  which  she  has  made  in  manufac¬ 
tures  and  commerce  1  What  other  cause  can  be  assigned 

O 

why,  supplying  half  the  world  with  manufactures,  she 
supplies  not  herself  with  bread  ?  What  other  cause  can 
be  assigned  why  every  branch  of  her  mercantile  establish¬ 
ment,  gigantic  as  it  is,  overflows  with  capital,  while  capi¬ 
tal  cannot  be  found  to  cultivate  the  waste  lands  which 

disfigure  so  many  of  her  provinces  ? . How  does  it 

happen  that  the  ground  in  the  West  Indies  has  been  en¬ 
abled  to  draw  such  masses  of  capital  from  commerce  itself  ? 
And  how  does  it  happen  that  the  cultivator  there  ex¬ 
hibits  an  intensity  of  zeal  and  exertion  so  much  beyond 
what  is  witnessed  in  Europe1?  The  only  answer  is  that  the 
cultivator  there  is  at  once  the  cultivator  ancl  the  owner  of  the 
soil;  every  improvement  he  makes  is  exclusively  his  own, 
he  is  enabled  to  borrow  capital  by  giving  security  upon 
his  estate,  and  the  rapid  circulation  of  estates  from  hand 
to  hand  enlivens  his  activity,  and  accommodates  him  in 
every  change  of  circumstances.  Entirely  similar  is  the 
operation  of  similar  causes  in  the  United  States  of 
America ;  nor  can  it  be  reasonably  doubted  that  similar 
effects  would  flow  from  them  in  Europe.”* 

And  similar  effects  have  actually  flown  and  are  actually 
flowing  from  such  operation  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe 
in  which  the  experiment  has  been  made.  Mr.  John 
Bright  whispers  the  expediency  of  such  experiment  in 
Ireland — “  spoliator,”  “  communist,”  and  the  foulest  epi¬ 
thets  in  robbery  nomenclature,  are,  in  consequence,  flung 
at  him  by  the  few  monopolists  of  the  soil. 


*  “  Preview,”  p.  30. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


147 


Jovellanos  also  censures  the  possession  of  lands  by 
municipal  bodies,  just  as  their  possession  in  Ireland  by 
speculating  jobbers  is  no  less  to  be  reprobated.  “  Though 
Jovellanos,”  says  the  reviewer,  “  allows  that  this  property 
is  equally  sacred  and  worthy  of  protection  with  that  of  in¬ 
dividuals,  he  thinks  the  national  good  demands  that  those 
municipal  bodies,  as  they  show  that  they  cannot  them¬ 
selves  turn  their  land  to  advantage,  should  be  compelled 
to  divide  and  dispose  of  it,  either  by  absolute  transfer  or 
in  the  way  of  perpetual  rent.”  This  is  precisely  what  the 
“National  Building  and  Land  Company  of  Ireland”  pro¬ 
posed,  or  pretended  doing,  but  then  it  adopted  the  some¬ 
what  inadequate  means  thereto,  of,  at  once,  raising  the  rent 
to  a  fearful  figure,  and  otherwise  mulcting  the  unfortunate 
tenants  with  any  amount  of  exactions. 

What  a  similarity  between  the  spirit  of  the  Spanish  and 
the  Irish  land  codes — both  the  offspring  of  landlord  legis¬ 
lation  ! 

“  The  society,”  says  Jovellanos,  “  in  examining  Cas¬ 
tilian  legislation  in  regard  to  agriculture,  cannot  but  ex¬ 
perience  a  feeling  of  alarm  at  sight  of  the  multitude  of 
laws  which  our  code  embraces  on  a  subject  so  simple. 
Will  it  dare  affirm  that  the  greater  part  of  these  laws 
has  not  been,  and  is  not  still,  either  entirely  opposed,  or 
extremely  injurious,  or  at  least  useless,  to  their  object  V7 
As  in  Ireland,  “  the  whole  code  relating  to  landlord  and 
tenant  was  framed  with  a  view  to  the  interests  of 
the  landlords  alone,”*  though  professing  to  have  in  view 
the  good  of  the  entire  community — the  end  of  all  law. 

“  Let  there  be  no  act  of  parliament  on  either  side,” 
said  O’Connell,  “  and  the  condition  of  the  tenant  will  be 
greatly  benefited,  by  depriving  the  landlord  of  much  of 
the  legal  machinery  by  which  he  is  enabled  to  extort 


*  Baron  Pennefather,  cited  above. 


148 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


exorbitant  rents  from  the  occupying  tenants.  All  that 
would  be  necessary  would  be  to  repeal  a  few  acts  of  par¬ 
liament,  and  to  restore  the  ancient  common  law  of 
England,  with  respect  to  the  relation  of  landlord  and 
tenant.”* 

Precisely  the  same  sentiment  that  Jovellanos  enu¬ 
merated,  nearly  seventy  years  ago,  as  a  universal  principle 
applicable  to  every  country.  “  A  little  reflection,”  says 
he,  “  on  this  subject,  will  enable  us  to  see  that  agriculture 
has  always  a  tendency  towards  its  perfection;  that  laws 
can  favor  it  only  in  giving  this  tendency  greater  strength; 
that  this  favor  does  not  consist  so  much  in  giving  it  en¬ 
couragement  as  in  removing  the  obstacles  which  retard 
its  progress  ;  in  a  word,  that  the  one  aim  of  laws  relative 
to  agriculture  ought  to  be  to  protect  the  interests  of  its 
agents,  by  clearing  away  all  the  obstacles  which  might 
embarrass  or  weaken  its  action  and  its  movement.  It 
is  evident  that  the  office  of  the  laws,  in  face  of  both  one 
and  the  other  property  (that  of  both  land  and  its  pro¬ 
duce),  should  not  be  to  stimulate  or  to  direct,  but  solely  to 
'protect  the  interests  of  the  worker,  naturally  active  and 
quite  bent  on  his  object.”  Hence,  a  return  to  the  com¬ 
mon  law  of  the  land  would  be  a  greater  benefit  to  the  in¬ 
dustrious  tiller,  than  any  amount  of  premiums  awarded 
either  by  law,  or  by  those  hollow,  hypocritical  “  agricul¬ 
tural  shows,”  in  which  one  in  ten  thousand  of  the  husband¬ 
men  can  take  no  part,  and  which  were  conceived,  and  are 
carried  out,  just  like  the  laws  themselves,  in  favor  of  the 
landlords  and  the  consolidators. 

On  this  subject  the  reviewer  himself  pithily  remarks  : 
“There  is  not  a  country  in  Europe  (there  was  not  when 
he  wrote,  Austria  and  France,  perhaps,  excepted)  where 
the  legislature,  either  from  blind  and  ignorant  con- 


*  Letter  in  1843. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


149 


ceptions  of  improvement,  or  from  base  subservience 
to  the  interests  of  some  leading  classes  (as  in  Ireland), 
has  not  loaded  agriculture  with  some  pernicious  regula¬ 
tions,  and  opposed  to  its  progress  some  fatal  obstacles. 
The  service,  therefore,  which  our  author  requires  at  the 
hands  of  legislators,  is,  not  to  build  up,  but  to  pull  down 
— not  to  establish  new  laws,  but  to  abolish  old  ” — the 
same  service  that  O’Connell  required  for  Ireland  twenty- 
six  years  ago — “  the  repeal  of  a  few  acts  of  parlia¬ 
ment.”* 

We  cannot  conclude  our  notice  of  Jovellanos  and  the 
review  on  his  work  without  citing  the  following  deeply 
philosophical  passage :  11  The  fruits  of  the  earth,”  says 
he,  “  being  the  immediate  product  of  labor  and  forming 
the  only  property  of  the  tenant,  this  property  is  the  more 
entitled  to  protection  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  that,  on  the 
one  hand,  it  represents  the  sustenance  of  the  largest  and 
most  precious  portion  of  the  individuals  of  the  state; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  constitutes  the  only  recom¬ 
pense  of  their  sweat  and  their  fatigue.  No  one  owes  it 
to  fortune,  or  to  the  chance  of  birth ;  each  one  draws  it 
immediately  from  his  talents  and  his  application.  It  is, 
besides,  very  uncertain  and  very  precarious,  because  it 
depends,  to  a  great  extent,  on  the  influence  of  climate 
and  the  variations  of  the  atmosphere.  It  is,  therefore, 
certain  that  it  unites  in  itself  all  the  claims  that  can 
recommend  it  to  the  justice  and  the  humanity  of  the 
government.  It  is  not  alone  the  husbandman  who  is 
interested  in  the  protection  of  this  property,  it  is  equally 
the  proprietor,  because  its  products  are  naturally  divided 
between  the  master  and  the  cultivator.”  Profound 
truisms  !  yet  so  ignored  in  Ireland,  no  less  than,  it 
would  seem,  partially  in  Spain.  Spain,  at  this  moment, 


*  Ibid. 


I 


150 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


is  paying  the  penalty  (1)  How  soon  shall  Ireland  ? 
Jovellanos  expiated  his  humanity  and  sense  of  common 
fairness  by  seven  years’  duresse  in  a  Castilian  cachet; 
O’Connell  got  off  with  only  nine  months’  for  the  sedition 
and  conspiracy  of  preaching  Eepeal  and  tenant  right. 

Thus,  while  England  imitates  the  worst  practices  of 
the  worst  governments  on  the  continent  (Naples,  in  prison 
bolts  and  arbitrary  arrests,  no  less  than  in  her  feudal 
estates  and  grass  farms ;  Spain,  in  her  virtual  Mesta,  her 
consolidations  and  entails),  she  refuses  to  borrow  an  idea 
from  the  others,  whose  opposite  regime  has  secured  the 
prosperity  of  an  abundant  and  increasing  population. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


151 


CHAPTER  IX. 

INDIA. 


61  The  case  of  Ireland  is  similar  in  its  requirements  to  that  of  India.  Tn 
India,  though  great  errors  have,  from  time  to  time,  been  committed,  no  one 
ever  proposed,  under  the  name  of  agricultural  improvements,  to  eject  the  ryots 
or  peasant  farmers  from  their  possessions.  The  improvement  that  has  been 
looked  for  has  been  through  making  their  tenures  more  secure  to  them,  and 
the  sole  difference  of  opinion  is  between  those  who  contend  for  perpetuity  and 
those  who  think  that  long  leases  will  suffice.  The  same  question  exists  as  to 
Ireland,  and  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  long  leases,  under  such  landlords  as 
are  sometimes  to  be  found,  do  effect  wonders,  even  in  Ireland.  But  then  they 
MUST  BE  LEASES  AT  A  LOW  KENT.” — Mill's  “  Polit.  ECOII.,"  b.  ii.,  C.  X. 


Previous  to  tlie  conquest  of  Bengal  by  the  East  India 
Company,  the  land  was,  strictly  speaking,  owned  by  the 
cultivators  themselves.  These  paid  their  taxes  to  the 
zemindars ,  or  public  tax  officers  of  the  supreme  govern¬ 
ment,  a  body  of  men,  like  all  their  class  in  every  age 
and  clime,  from  the  “  publican”  of  the  gospel  to  the 
“  land-agent”  of  Ireland,  heartlessly  rapacious  in  the 
exaction  of  unjust  and  exorbitant  imposts.  The  Company, 
in  order  to  give  the  zemindars  a  greater  interest  in  the 
soil,  converted  them,  under  Lord  Cornwallis,  in  1793, 
into  proprietors  or  absolute  owners  of  those  districts 
within  which  their  jurisdiction  ran.  This  only  made 
matters  worse.  Inflated  with  pride  at  their  strange 
elevation,  they  began  a  course  of  luxurious  living,  which 
could  be  maintained  only  at  the  cost  of  the  life-blood  of 
their  unfortunate  dependents.  Like  the  Irish  landlords 
of  the  two  past  generations,  however,  they  soon  ate,  and 


152 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


drank,  and  debauched  themselves  to  ruin.  Their  lands 
were  gradually  bought  up  by  less  extravagant  people, 
who,  taught  by  experience,  gradually  relaxed,  without 
entirely  throwing  over,  the  system  of  exactions  previously 
carried  into  practice. 

The  ryot  system,  adopted  by  Sir  Thomas  Munro, 
governor  of  Madras,  was  a  vast  improvement  on  the 
zemindar.  The  ryot,  in  fact,  was  made  absolute  owner, 
“  the  real  proprietor,”  as  Alison  says,  “  of  the  soil.”* 
There  was  no  landlord  between  himself  and  the  supreme 
government,  to  which,  through  its  agents,  he  paid  his 
land  tax.  Of  this  system,  though  liable  to  much  abuse, 
the  same  author  remarks :  “  It  is  evident  that  this 
system  is  calculated  to  be  much  more  beneficial  than  the 
zemindar  one  to  the  cultivators  of  the  soil,  because  they 
are  thereby  brought  directly  into  contact  with  the 
government,  and  participate  at  once,  without  the  inter¬ 
vention  of  any  middle-man,  in  the  benefit  of  a  fixed 
quit-rent  only  being  exacted  from  the  land.”t 

The  third  is  the  well-known  village  (or  tribal)  system 
so  general  throughout  the  East.  It  could  not  be  better 
described  than  in  the  words  of  the  author  now  quoted : 
u  To  it,”  says  he,  “  probably  more  than  any  other  cause 
the  preservation  of  its  population  and  industry,  amidst  the 
endless  devastations  of  wars,  is  to  be  ascribed.  Each 
village  forms  a  little  community  or  republic  in  itself, 
possessing  a  certain  district  of  surrounding  territories, 
and  paying  a  certain  fixed  rent  for  the  whole  to  govern¬ 
ment.  As  long  as  this  is  regularly  paid  the  public  authori¬ 
ties  have  no  right  to  interfere  in  the  internal  concerns  of 
the  community.  They  elect  their  own  mocuddims,  or 
head-men,  who  levy  the  proportion  of  the  quit-rent  from 
each  individual,  settle  disputes,  and  allocate  to  each 


*  “Hist.  Europe,”  vol.  x.,  p.  357. 


+  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


153 


profession,  or  individual,  the  share  of  the  general  produce 
of  the  public  territory  which  is  to  belong  to  it  or  him. 
As  the  community  is  justly  desirous  of  avoiding  any 
pretext  for  the  interference  of  the  state  collectors  in  its 
internal  concerns,  they  make  good  the  quota  of  every 
defaulter  from  the  funds  of  his  neighbors,  so  as  to 
exhibit  no  defaulter  in  the  general  return  to  government. 
The  only  point  in  which  the  interference  of  the  national 
authorities  is  required,  is  in  fixing  the  limits  of  the 
village  territories  in  a  question  with  each  other,  which  is 
done  with  great  care  by  surveyors,  in  presence  of  the 
competing  parties  and  their  witnesses,  and  a  great  con¬ 
course  of  the  neighboring  inhabitants . These 

villages  are,  indeed,  frequently  burned  or  destroyed  by 
hostile  forces,  the  little  community  dispersed,  and  its 
lands  restored  to  a  state  of  nature;  but  when  better 
times  return,  and  the  means  of  peaceable  occupation  are 
again  recovered,  the  remnant  reassemble  with  their 
children  in  their  paternal  inheritance.  A  generation 
may  pass  away,  but  the  succeeding  generation  return ; 
the  sons  take  the  place  of  their  fathers ;  the  same  trades 
and  occupations  are  filled  by  the  descendants  of  those 
who  formerly  filled  them ;  the  same  division  of  land  takes 
'glace;  the  very  houses  are  rebuilt  on  the  site  of  those 
which  had  been  destroyed ;  and,  emerging  from  the 
storm,  the  community  revives  another  and  the  same.” 
And  he  adds,  as  he  began  :  “It  is  in  these  village  muni¬ 
cipalities  that  the  real  secret  of  the  durability  of  society 

in  the  East  is  to  be  found . But  amidst  those 

multiplied  evils  (invasions,  &c.),  the  village  system  has 
provided  an  unheeded  but  enduring  refuge  for  mankind. 
....  The  Hindoos,  the  Patans,  the  Moguls,  the  Sikhs, 
the  English,  have  all  been  masters  in  turn,  but  the  village 
communities  remain  the  same.”* 


*  “Hist.  Europe,”  vol.  x.,  p.  358-9. 


154 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


On  the  question  of  this  village  or  “  tribal  ”  system,  we 
would  strongly  recommend  the  perusal  of  a  few  thoughtful 
remarks  by  A.  Gr.  Richey,  Esq.,  in  his  “  Lectures  on  Early 
Irish  History” — a  little  volume,  recently  published,  which 
we  have  read  with  pleasure  and  profit.  In  all  this  we  can¬ 
not  fail  to  perceive  the  incalculable  advantage  of  owner¬ 
ship,  or  something  substantially  equivalent,  such  as  perfect 
security  and  fixity  of  tenure  on  the  part  of  the  occupier 
and  cultivator  of  the  soil.  It  has  saved  India  through 
ages  of  violence  and  devastation.  Its  stubborn  denial 
hurled  the  French  aristocracy  from  their  high  places  and 
immunities,  propertyless  on  the  earth.  Its  just  and 
quiet  concession  spared  Prussia  the  horrors  of  a  similar 
ordeal,  and  has  ultimately  raised  her  to  her  present 
proud  and  powerful  position  among  European  nations. 

Indian  legislators,  unlike  those  of  Westminster,  hitherto 
have  practically  repudiated  the  fatal  policy  of  “  let  alone” 
in  connexion  with  tenure  of  land.  We  extract  the  fol¬ 
lowing  from  an  interesting  communication  to  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  of  August  last,  the  moral  of  which  it  would 
be  well  if  our  home  senators  took  to  heart.  After  des¬ 
cribing  substantially  as  above  the  previous  laws,  it  says — 

“  In  1859,  under  the  reservation  contained  in  the  Act 
of  1793,  an  Act  was  passed  by  the  Legislative  Council, 
which,  according  to  English  notions,  was  a  very  strong 
one.  Its  leading  provisions  were  as  follows  : — It  recog¬ 
nized,  in  the  first  place,  the  existence  of  three  classes  of 
tenants— tenants  having  a  right  of  occupancy  so  long  as 
they  paid  their  rent,  tenants  having  a  right  of  occupancy 
at  a  fixed  rent,  and  tenants  with  no  right  of  occupancy  at 
all.  The  recognition  of  the  last  class  is  made  by  various 
provisions,  specifying  the  manner  in  which  particular 
tenants  may  show  that  they  belong  to  one  of  the  supe¬ 
rior  classes.  The  substance  of  the  provision  in  question 
is  as  follows  : — 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


155 


“  As  to  the  first  class  of  tenants,  who  had  held  at  a 
fixed  rent  since  the  permanent  settlement,  they  were  de¬ 
clared  to  he  entitled  to  leases  at  those  rates  ;  and  it  was 
enacted  that  every  one  who  held  at  a  fixed  rent  for 
twenty  years  should  he  presumed  to  have  held  at  that 
rate  since  the  permanent  settlement. 

“  As  for  the  second  class  of  tenants,  it  was  declared 
that  every  tenant  who  had  cultivated  or  held  land  for 
twelve  years  had  a  right  of  occupancy,  with  certain  ex¬ 
ceptions.  This,  however,  was  not  to  affect  any  express 
wwitten  contract  between  landlords  and  tenants.  The 
rent  to  be  paid  by  such  tenants  was  settled  by  the 
following  remarkable  provision  : — ‘  Eyots  having  rights 
of  occupancy,  but  not  holding  at  fixed  rates,  ....  are 
entitled  to  receive  (leases)  at  fair  and  equitable  rates. 
In  case  of  dispute  the  rate  previously  paid  by  the  ryot 
shall  be  deemed  to  be  fair  and  equitable,  unless  the  con¬ 
trary  be  shown  in  a  suit  by  either  party.’ 

“  Further  provisions  state  the  circumstances  under 
which  tenants,  at  a  rent  not  fixed,  are  to  be  liable  to 
enhancement  of  their  existing  rent  at  the  expiration  of 
their  current  term.  Such  an  enhancement  is  forbidden, 
except  in  the  three  following  cases  : — First,  where  the 
rate  of  rent  paid  is  below  that  usually  paid  in  adjacent 
places  for  similar  land;  next,  where  the  value  of  the 
produce  or  of  the  productive  powders  of  the  land  has  been 
increased  otherwise  than  by  the  agency  or  at  the  expense 
of  the  ryot  ;  and,  thirdly,  where  the  quantity  of  the  land 
held  by  the  ryot  has  been  proved  to  be  greater  than  the 
quantity  for  which  rent  has  been  previously  paid  by  him. 
Broadly  the  effect  of  the  law  was  this  :  Twenty  years’ 
occupancy  at  a  fixed  rent  shall  give  a  right  to  occupy  at  that 
rent ;  twelve  years’  occupancy  shall  give  a  right  to  occupy 
at  the  rent  then  paid,  unless  special  cause  for  raising  it  can 
be  shown  ;  and  the  rent  shall  not  be  raised  on  the  expira- 


156 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


tion  of  a  tenancy,  except  in  one  of  three  cases  of  which  the 
following  are  types  : — It  appears  that,  for  no  assignable 
cause,  a  man  is  paying  five  shillings  an  acre  less  than  his 
neighbors  for  similar  lands.  A  railway  has  been  con¬ 
structed,  which  raises  the  value  of  his  land  by  giving  him 
a  new  market.  He  has  been  paying  rent  for  ten  acres, 
whereas  it  appears  by  measurement  that  he  holds  twelve. 
In  the  converse,  we  should  add  to  this,  that  the  Bengal 
Bent  Law  contains  many  provisions  by  which  the  grant¬ 
ing  of  leases,  and  the  settlement  of  the  rent  at  which 
they  are  to  be  granted,  become,  so  to  speak,  judicial  acts. 
Thus,  the  tenant  may  either  resist  a  suit  for  rent  on  the 
ground  that  the  rent  is  too  high,  or  he  may  complain  of 
an  excessive  demand,  and  recover  double  the  amount.  The 
power  of  distress,  moreover,  was  considerably  modified. 

“  We  do  not  express  any  opinion  at  all  as  to  the  policy 
of  this  measure,  or  as  to  the  effects  which  it  has  produced 
in  Bengal.  Our  object  in  referring  to  it  is,  to  give  a  spe¬ 
cimen  of  the  manner  in  which  English  governments  have 
dealt  with  questions  not  unlike  the  great  question  of  the 
Irish  land,  and  to  consider  how  far  the  precedent  is  ap¬ 
plicable  to  Ireland.  Ho  doubt  it  is  one  which  deserves 
attentive  study,  but  in  order  to  avoid  the  error  of  attach¬ 
ing  undue  importance  to  it,  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in 
mind  several  important  differences  between  Ireland  and 
India.  In  the  first  place,  the  relative  power  of  the 
Indian  legislature  is  far  greater  than  that  of  parliament. 
A  small  body  of  legislators,  backed  in  the  last  resort  by 
overpowering  armed  force,  and  separated  by  the  impas¬ 
sioned  gulf  of  race  and  language,  can,  and  habitually  do, 
act  towards  the  different  classes  which  are  under  their 
sway  after  a  fashion  which  parliament  is  by  no  means 
likely  to  imitate.  If,  however,  we  assume  that  parlia¬ 
ment  really  means  to  put  out  its  power  in  order  to  deal 
thoroughly  with  a  great  question,  we  must  lay  this  out 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


157 


of  account,  and  look  at  the  differences  in  the  circum¬ 
stances  of  the  two  cases.  The  first,  and  we  think  the  most 
important,  of  these  is  to  he  found  in  the  fact  that, 
whereas  in  India  the  law  was,  so  to  speak,  in  a  fluid  state, 
being  composed,  in  so  far  as  it  could  be  said  to  exist  at 
all,  of  vague  customs  and  usages,  differing  from  time  to 
time  and  village  to  village,  the  law  in  Ireland  is  only  too 
plain.  Most  people  are  now  agreed  that,  whatever  may 
have  been  the  policy  of  the  permanent  settlement,  it 
was  enacted  in  profound  ignorance  of  native  customs, 
habits,  and  laws — in  so  far  as  laws  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  word  can  be  said  to  have  existed  in  a  country  so 
much  disorganized  by  foreign  conquest  and  civil  wars. 
The  laws  of  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  are  perfectly 
well  known.  Perhaps  one  of  the  best  descriptions  which 
can  be  given  of  that  sort  of  justice  which  people  usually 
describe  as  fairness  and  equity,  is,  that  it  consists  in  seeing 
„  that  men’s  reasonable  expectations  are  not  disappointed — 
a  reasonable  expectation  being  one  which  proceeds  upon 
the  assumption  of  steady  adherence  to  established  prin¬ 
ciples  and  modes  of  action,  in  so  far  as  they  affect  indi¬ 
vidual  interests.  If,  for  instance,  when  a  man  took  land 
at  a  given  rent,  he  and  his  neighbors  all  understood, 
though  they  did  not  say  it  in  so  many  words,  that  so 
long  as  he  paid  the  rent  he  was  to  hold  the  land,  he 
would  reasonably  feel  himself  aggrieved  if  he  was  after¬ 
wards  dispossessed  of  it  for  the  sake  of  higher  rent ;  but 
what  Irish  tenant  can  say  with  truth  than  any  such 
understanding  existed  between  him  and  his  landlord 
when  they  entered  into  that  relation  1  To  give  the  force 
of  express  law  to  tacit  custom  is  comparatively  easy ;  to 
throw  into  the  shape  of  express  rules  fluid  and  shifting 
customs  is  for  a  strong  government  not  impossible ;  but 
what  can  the  legislature  make  of  a  state  of  things  in 
which  the  custom  of  the  landlord  is  to  treat  the  land  as 


158 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


his  absolute  property,  in  which  the  custom  of  the  tenant 
is  to  shoot  him  and  his  agents  deadfor  so  doing — especially 
when  the  law,  properly  so  called,  is  distinctly  upon  the 
side  of  the  landlord  1  This  is  the  great  leading  feature 
of  the  Irish  land  question,  and  constitutes  its  principal 
difficulty. 

“We  see  nothing  in  Indian  legislation  which  affords 
much  help  for  it ;  the  difference  is,  that  in  India  order 
has  to  be  evolved  out  of  chaos,  whereas  in  Ireland 
two  definite  and  conflicting  views  are  struggling  for  the 
mastery,  and  one  of  these  views  has,  beyond  all  possi¬ 
bility  of  question,  the  law  in  its  favor.  The  legal  right 
of  an  Irish  landlord  to  evict  all  his  tenants  on  six  months’ 
notice,  and  to  put  into  his  own  pocket,  in  the  shape  of 
rent,  every  farthing  of  the  increased  value  of  the  land, 
whatever  cause  may  have  produced  that  increase,  is  as 
indisputable  as  his  legal  right  to  walk  down  the  Strand. 
The  determination  of  the  Irish  peasantry  in  many  parts 
of  Ireland  to  resist  the  enforcement  of  those  legal  rights 
by  assassination,  is  as  clear  as  the  determination  of  the 
English  people  to  resist  invasion.  This  is  the  real  diffi¬ 
culty  of  the  case,  and  we  do  not  see  how  Indian  legisla¬ 
tion  shows  us  the  way  out  of  it. 

“  If,  however,  we  suppose  that  parliament  should 
determine  to  enforce  a  compromise,  much  might  be  learnt 
from  Indian  legislation  as  to  the  sort  of  terms  that  might 
be  imposed  upon  parties.  The  conditions,  for  instance, 
under  which  rent  might  be  raised  at  the  expiration  of  a 
lease,  the  principle  of  giving  the  tenant  a  legal  remedy 
against  the  raising  of  his  rent  under  other  circumstances, 
and  the  restraints  laid  upon  the  power  of  distress,  are 
well  worthy  of  consideration  with  reference  to  Ireland  ; 
but  to  give  a  right  of  permanent  occupancy  upon  proof 
of  twelve  years’  tenancy ;  still  more,  to  give  a  right  of 
permanent  occupancy  at  a  fixed  rent  upon  proof  of 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


159 


twenty  years’  tenancy,  are  proceedings  of  a  very  different 
character.  They  imply  a  degree  of  vagueness  in  the 
existing  legal  rights  of  the  parties  which,  perhaps  unfor¬ 
tunately,  does  not  exist  in  Ireland.  The  subject,  how¬ 
ever,  is  one  to  which  we  hope  to  return.” 

This  entire  passage  is  well  worth  reproducing  in  ex- 
tenso.  The  only  point  in  which  the  writer  seems  at  fault 
is  that  in  which  he  confounds  fact  with  right,  as  regards 
the  “  understanding  ”  on  which  the  helpless  Irish  tenant 
took  his  land.  No  alternative  was  left  him,  except 
taking  it  at  the  beck  and  on  the  terms  of  the  landlord. 
Should  this  be  so  ?  Common  sense,  innate  instinct, 
answers  :  “  No.”  Therefore,  such  an  “  understanding  ” 
should  be  treated  by  the  legislature  quasi  non  esset;  or 
rather  as  a  thing  absolutely  immoral  in  itself. 

The  following,  from  the  Irish  Times  of  the  30th  July 
last,  will  be  found  no  less  interesting  and  instructive  : — 

“  The  permanent  settlement  of  the  land  revenue,”  it 
says,  “  is  the  Indian  way  of  expressing  what  we  call  in 
Ireland  the  permanent  settlement  of  the  land  question. 
The  report  states  that  this  settlement  is  making  satisfac¬ 
tory  progress  in  all  directions  :  4  Nothing  will  be  wanting 
on  the  part  of  the  government  of  these  (the  north-west) 
provinces,  and  of  its  several  settlement  officers,  to  carry 
out,  legally  and  thoroughly,  the  principles  laid  down  for 
their  guidance.  The  completion  of  this  great  work,  upon 
which  the  future  progress  and  prosperity  of  these  provin¬ 
ces  mainly  depend,  is  expected  at  an  early  date.’ 

“In  the  kingdom  of  Oudli,  we  are  told,  ‘  it  was  agreed 
on  the  part  of  the  talookdars,  i.e.,  the  landed  gentry,’ 
that  a  large  class  of  the  tenantry  (estimated  at  one-fifth 
of  the  whole  of  the  cultivators  in  Oudh)  should  re¬ 
ceive  rights  of  occupancy;  and  important  advantages 
were  afforded  to  other  tenants  of  the  same  class.  The 
compromise  thus  effected  ‘  secured  to  the  talookdars 


160 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ample  rights,  position,  and  privilege ;  whilst,  by  the  timely 
concessions  granted  to  the  cultivators,  the  country  was 
guarded  against  perils  arising  from  the  severance  of  the 
(peasant)  proprietors  and  cultivators  from  all  connection 
with  the  soil,  or  from  liability  to  eviction  as  a  class 
possessing  no  rights  capable  of  definition  or  worthy  of 
preservation  at  the  hands  of  British  authorities.’ 

“  The  perils  here  spoken  of  are  not  agrarian  outrages, 
but  a  renewal  of  the  rebellion  which  broke  out  in  Oudh, 
in  conjunction  with  the  Sepoy  mutiny  of  1857.  We 
trust  that  a  Blue  Book  on  Ireland,  of  a  date  not  much 
later  than  1871,  will  speak  in  equally  hopeful  terms  of 
the  settlement  of  the  land  question  at  home 

“  It  is  worth  remarking  that  there  was  one  grievance 
from  which  the  Oudh  cultivator  was  free.  He  did  not 
suffer  from  an  absentee  talookdary.  The  wealth  of  the 
land  he  tilled  was  not  drained  from  it  to  be  squandered 
in  Calcutta  or  in  London.  . 

“  In  the  central  provinces,  we  learn  that  ‘  the  most  im¬ 
portant  measure  which  has  been  brought  about  is  the 
enlargement  of  the  rules  for  the  admission  of  peasant  pro¬ 
prietorship.’  The  position  of  the  ryots,  or  cultivators, 
is  now  secured  *  on  a  footing  unassailable  by  the  pro¬ 
prietors  of  their  villages.’  In  British  Burmah,  the  estates, 
on  the  average,  do  not  exceed  eight  or  ten  acres.  The 
people  generally  have  acquired  a  considerable  amount 
of  personal  property.  The  small  landed  proprietors 
are  independent  and  prosperous.  The  rate  of  wages 
for  a  common  day  laborer  secures  him  a  comfortable 
subsistence.  Yet,  among  the  Burmese  there  is  no  class 
that  can  be  called  wealthy.  No  Marquis  of  Westminster, 
for  example,  with  a  couple  of  thousand  pounds  a  day  to 
spend  as  he  likes.  Nor  are  there  any  zemindars  or 
middlemen  of  any  description,  but  government  deals 
directly  with  the  cultivator  of  the  soil.  So  long  as  the 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


1C1 


owner  pays  the  rent  fixed  by  the  government  valuation, 
his  tenure  is  secure.  Nor  is  any  rent  charged  for  such 
waste  lands  as  he  may  have  brought  into  cultivation. 

“This  system,  it  is  commonly  alleged,  would  be 
ruinous  in  Ireland  ;  ruinous  to  the  peasant,  and  wasteful 
to  the  imperial  exchequer.  In  Burmah,  we  have  seen  it 
does  not  ruin  the  peasant,  and  with  respect  to  the  govern¬ 
ment,  we  are  told  that  ‘  the  revenue  has  been  steadily 
increasing.’  In  Mysore,  also,  ‘the  actual  income  from 
land  exceeded  the  budget  estimates,  and  was  more  than 
that  for  1865-6,  a  year  remarkable  for  its  financial  pros¬ 
perity.  Similar  are  the  accounts  from  Bombay,  from 
the  Nizam’s  dominions,  from  Madras  and  other  provin¬ 
ces.  They  speak  of  increased  cultivation,  increased  com¬ 
fort,  and,  to  the  government,  increased  revenue,  and  all 
these  effects  are  ascribed  to  the  progress  of  the  settlement 
of  the  land  revenue — the  essential  features  of  that  settle¬ 
ment  being  security  of  tenure  and  limitation  of  rent  to 
the  cultivator.” 

“  The  position  of  the  ryots,  or  cultivators,  is  now 
secured  on  a  footing  unassailable  by  the  proprietors  of 
their  villages.”  There  it  is  in  a  nutshell.  And,  as  a  con¬ 
sequence,  “the  small  landed  proprietors  of  estates  of 
from  ten  to  twelve  acres  ”  “  are  independent  and  pros¬ 
perous.”  Are  wTe  ever  to  have  such  a  blissful  consumma¬ 
tion  in  Ireland,  or  is  the  mischievous  and  outrageous 
sentiment  uttered  by  Lord  Clanrickarde  lately  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  ever  to  prevail1?  “If,”  said  the  noble 
lord,  “an  occupier  obtained  a  parliamentary  title  to  a 
lease  under  the  name  of  fixity  of  tenure,  he  would 

practically  become  the  owner . As  to  giving 

occupiers,  by  act  of  parliament,  leases  for  twenty-one, 
thirty-one,  or  sixty-one  years,  this  would  virtually  be 
conferring  on  them  the  ownership  of  the  soil.  It  would, 
moreover,  be  a  despotism  hitherto  unknown  in  any 


L 


162 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


country,  to  insist  that  an  occupier  should  continue  in  his 
occupation  for  a  considerable  number  of  years.”  Which 
to  admire  the  more  in  this  utterance — the  arrogant 
assumption  of  a  natural  right  to  exclusive  ownership  on 
the  part  of  “  large  proprietors”  (whom  he  deems  a  land 
of  divine  institution),  or  the  claim  put  forward  in  favor 
of  the  “despotism”  of  the  few  over  the  many,  or  the 
not  very  creditable  ignorance  of  the  agrarian  condition 
and  landed  tenure  of  other  countries,  it  is  not  easy  to 
say.  At  all  events,  the  cool  expression  of  such  a  senti¬ 
ment,  in  the  wane  of  the  nineteenth  century  of  human  re¬ 
demption,  by  a  man  professing  the  divine  creed  of  Him 
who  was  “  meek  and  humble  of  heart,”  who  came  not 
merely  to  redeem,  hut  also  to  teach  lessons  of  charity  and 
benevolence  above  all  other  virtues,  is  a  -warning  to  the 
friends  of  the  tenant-at-will  to  buckle  on  their  armor 
in  time,  and  prepare  for  a  determined  conflict.  We  ask 
no  more  in  Ireland  than  is  actually  conceded  in  Oudh 
and  Burmah.  And  who  will  say  that  the  Irish  tenant 
is  not  entitled  to  as  much  justice  and  protection  as  the 
Indian  ryot  and  talookdar  h  And  will  it  be  recorded 
that  what  colonial  governors  were  able  to  accomplish  for 
the  semi-civilized  Indian,  the  imperial  legislature  is 
impotent  to  effect  for  the  sensitive  and  spiritualized 
Irish  tenant  1  If  so,  it,  by  the  very  admission,  proclaims 
its  inability,  and,  therefore,  its  non-title,  to  legislate  for 
Ireland.  On  other  grounds  the  title  is  weak  enough — 
founded,  as  it  has  been,  in  the  words  of  O’Connell,  “  in 
the  combined  operations  of  force,  fraud,  corruption,  and 
torture,”  and  conducted  on  the  identical  principles,  to 
which  have  been  superadded,  up  to  the  last  session  of 
parliament,  a  supreme  disregard  and  contempt  of  the 
opinions,  wants,  wishes,  and  interests  of  this  country. 
Let  us  have  an  Indian  land  code  in  Ireland,  and  the 
Irish  land  question  is  finally  settled. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


163 


CHAPTER  X. 

AMERICA. — CANADA. — THE  CAPE,  ETC. 

“If,”  writes  Mr.  Tuke,  “  lands  in  Mayo  were  made  as 
secure  to  the  farmer  as  they  are  on  the  banks  of  the 
Mississippi,  I  see  no  reason  why  they  should  not  be 
*  settled  *  and  cultivated  by  the  men  who  are  now  crossing 
the  Atlantic  (and  some  carrying  their  capital  with  them) 
to  extend  the  cultivation  and  increase  the  resources  of 
the  United  States.”*  And  this  freedom  of  the  land  is 
explained  by  Mr.  Mill  as  cultivator-proprietorship.  “  I 
lay  no  stress,”  says  he,  “  on  the  condition  of  North 
America,  where,  as  is  well  known,  the  land,  wherever 
free  from  the  curse  of  slavery,  is  almost  universally  owned 
by  the  same  person  who  holds  the  plough.  A  country 
combining  the  natural  fertility  of  America  with  the 
knowledge  and  arts  of  modern  Europe  is  so  peculiarly 
circumstanced,  that  scarcely  anything,  except  insecurity 
of  property,  or  a  tyrannical  government,  could  materially 
impair  the  prosperity  of  the  industrious  classes” — the 
two  very  causes,  combined,  that  have  ruined  tne  “  in¬ 
dustrious  classes”  of  Ireland. 


CANADA. 

In  Canada — now  “the  kingdom  of” — property  and 
occupancy  of  the  soil  by  the  same  individual  are  the  rule. 

*  “  Visit  to  Connaught  in  1S47,”  quoted  by  Mr.  Poulett  Scrope, 
in  his  “  Irish  Relief  Measures,  Past  and  Future.” 


164 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


No  doubt,  for  half  a  century  after  its  “  conquest  ”  by 
England,  the  odious  feudalism  of  the  “  mother  country” 
extensively  prevailed.  “  Land  speculators,”  “  camp 
settlers,”  and  “  Indian  traders,”  had  succeeded  in  almost 
engrossing  the  lands  of  better  quality,  as  they  had  all 
the  emolumentary  offices  in  the  state.  “  This  family 
connection,”  says  M‘Kenzie,  “  rules  Upper  Canada  ac¬ 
cording  to  its  own  pleasure,  and  has  no  efficient  check 
from  England  to  guard  the  people  against  its  acts  of 
tyranny  and  oppression.  It  includes  the  whole  of  the 
judges  of  the  supreme,  civil,  and  criminal  tribunals — 
all  active  Tory  politicians.  .  .  .  It  includes  half  the 
Executive  Council,  or  provincial  cabinet. 

“  It  includes  the  Speaker  and  eight  other  members  of 
the  Legislative  Council. 

“It  includes  the  persons  who  have  the  control  of  the 
Canada  Company’s  monopoly. 

“  It  includes  the  president  and  solicitor  of  the  bank, 
and  above  half  the  bank  directors,  together  with  share¬ 
holders,  &c.”* 

The  land  followed  the  fate  of  the  public  offices,  and, 
“  like  the  wooden  leg,”  “  ran  in  the  family.”  Thus,  we 
find  Mr.  W.  B.  Eelton,  with  his  eight  children,  one  son 
and  seven  daughters,  granted  23,541  acres  of  the  best 
ground  in  Lower  Canada, — little  Missie  Octavia  being 
only  an  infant  when  she  obtained  1,200  acres,  and  each 
of  her  brothers  and  sisters  the  same  amount,  “The 
Tenures  Act,”  making  tenure  as  insecure  as  in  Ireland 
to  the  feebler  classes,  was  in  full  force.  The  Britisli- 
American  Land  Company  secured  for  itself  a  monopoly 
destructive  of  the  best  interests  of  the  colony.  The 
colonists  and  new  settlers  remonstrated,  petitioned,  re¬ 
fused  to  consume  excisable  articles,  put  a  premium  on 


*  “Sketches  of  U.  Canada,”  p.  409. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


105 


Smuggling,  honored  the  trade  by  carrying  in  public  pro¬ 
cession  kegs  of  smuggled  brandy  and  chests  of  contra¬ 
band  tea,  in  the  teeth  of  the  revenue  articles,  and  ulti¬ 
mately  broke  out  into  open  insurrection  thirty  years  ago, 
and  thus  secured  the  double  boon — dearest  of  all  human 
benefits  to  man — of  possession  of  their  own  soil  and  self¬ 
legislation. 

Ireland  is  to-day  where  Canada  was  thirty  years  ago. 
How  long  is  she  so  to  he  ? 

In  fact,  the  English  victors  adopted  precisely  the  same 
course  with  the  French  habitans  that  their  fathers  and 
brothers  pursued  in  Ireland  and  India,  and  which  their 
fellow-countrymen  are  vainly  endeavoring  to  carry  out  in 
New  Zealand  to-day.  There  were  no  Earls  Granville  in 
those  countries  to  reprobate  the  system  of  confiscating 
land  taken  from  the  natives,  or  stating  that  it  “has 
always  been  regarded  by  the  home  government  as  preg¬ 
nant  with  danger;”  and  even  if  there  were,  there  would  be 
found  Messrs.  Sewell,  ex-officials  among  the  Maories,  to 
call  his  lordship  to  task,  and  remind  him  of  a  correction 
of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  in  1863,  to  the  effect  that  “  if 
the  present  dangers  of  New  Zealand  are  really  attribut¬ 
able,  as  his  lordship  suggests,  to  the  adoption  of  a  policy 
of  confiscation,  the  responsibility  of  that  policy  rests 
with  the  home  government,  not  with  the  colony.”* 
But  it  is  an  affair  of  minor  consideration  where  the 
responsibility  rests.  No  matter  where  the  Irish,  the 
Indians,  and  the  Maories  have  suffered,  “  Quidquid 
deliriunt  reges  plectuntur  Achivi.” 

The  Canadians,  like  all  other  men  who  have  a  stake 
in  the  land,  are  peculiarly  attached  to  the  soil.  “In 
Canada,”  writes  Alison,  “  local  attachment  operates 
among  the  habitans  of  French  descent  with  such  force, 

*  Evening  Pest ,  Dublin,  13th  October,  1869. 


166 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


that,  in  place  of  extending  into  the  surrounding  wilds, 
the  cultivators  divide  and  subdivide  among  their  children 
the  freeholds  they  have  already  acquired.  Population 
multiplies  inwards ,  not  outwards,  and  instead  of  spreading 
over  and  fertilizing  the  desert,  it  leads,  as  in  old  Prance, 
to  an  infinite  subdivision  among  the  inhabitants  of  the 
lands  already  cultivated.”*  Would  it  not  suggest  itself 
to  the  ordinary  thinker  that  these  habitans  find  plenty 
and  happiness  enough  in  their  cultivated  fields;  and 
that,  when  urged  by  the  pressure  of  population,  they  are 
sure  to  expand  themselves  into  those  forests  in  which 
they  will  be  made  owners  of  the  land  which  they  under¬ 
take  to  reclaim — not  be  left  to  the  caprice  of  such  a  man 
as  the  traditional  Irish  landlord  1 

In  connection  with  this  subject  the  same  author 
remarks  :  “  In  every  nation  that  has  hitherto  appeared, 
the  enjoyment  of  property,  and  engrossing  of  mankind 
in  the  cares  of  agriculture,  have  been  found  to  be 
attended  with  the  strongest  possible  attachment  by  the 
owners  of  the  soil  to  the  little  freeholds  which  they 
cultivate ;  and  nothing  short  of  the  greatest  disasters  in 
life  has  been  able  to  tear  them  away  from  the  seats  of 
their  childhood  and  the  spots  on  which  their  own 
industry  and  that  of  their  fathers  has  been  exerted. 
Mungo  Park  has  told  us  how  strong  this  feeling  is  in 
the  heart  of  Africa,  among  the  poor  negroes ;  to  him  no 
water  is  sweet  but  that  which  is  drawn  from  his  own 
well,  and  no  shade  refreshing  but  that  of  the  tabba  tree 
of  his  own  dwelling.  When  carried  into  captivity  by  a 
neighboring  tribe,  he  never  ceases  to  languish  during 
his  exile,  seizes  the  first  moment  to  escape,  rebuilds 
with  haste  his  fallen  walls,  and  exults  to  see  the  smoke 


*  “Hist.  Europe,”  vol.  xix.,  p.  30. 


/ 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  167 

ascend  from  Lis  native  village.* * * §  In  Ceylon,  Bishop 
Heber  informs  us,  the  attachment  of  the  cultivators  to 
their  little  properties  is  such,  that  it  is  not  unusual  to 
see  a  man  the  proprietor  of  the  hundred-and-fiftieth 
part  of  a  tree.t 

u  In  France  the  same  principle  has  always  been  strongly 
felt ;  and  Arthur  Young  long  ago  remarked  that  it  con¬ 
tinues  with  undiminished  strength,  though  the  freehold 
is  reduced  to  the  fraction  of  a  tree.”;};  And  the  progress 
and  prosperity  of  France,  as  already  seen  from  the  attes¬ 
tations  of  Monsieur  Passy  and  others’  sufficiently  be¬ 
speak  the  happy  results  of  these  minute  freeholds,  cre¬ 
ating,  as  they  naturally  do,  such  deep  interests  in  the 
minds  of  the  owners. 

That  instinctive  attachment  to  the  soil  which  one  can 
call  his  own,  is  no  less  developed  among  the  Boors  of  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  than  it  was  with  the  negroes  of 
Central  Africa  and  the  semi-savages  of  Ceylon.  Over 
twenty  years  ago  the  English  and  Scottish  settlers,  true  to 
their  traditions,  thought  to  limit  the  tenure  of  the  abori¬ 
gines  to  forty  years — the  Boors,  of  course,  holding,  accord¬ 
ing  to  their  own  usages  and  nature’s  own  law,  their  lands 
in  perpetuity.  What  was  the  consequence  ?  Why,  the 
outbreak  of  Pretorius,  and  the  abandonment  of  the 
attempt  at  confiscation  on  the  part  of  the  colonial 
government^  The  lands  of  Australia  are  all  let  or  to 
be  let  in  fee  or  freehold.  ||  In  one  word,  throughout  the 
inhabited,  civilized  globe,  nowhere  else  but  in  Ireland, 
and  partially  in  Wales  and  parts  of  Scotland,  but  in  a 

*  “Park’s  Travels,”  p.  247,  quoted,  ibid. 

+  “Heber’s  Travels,”  ii.,  247,  ibid. 

J  “Young’s  Travels  in  France,”  i.  496.  Tockviler,  ii.  204,  ibid, 

§  Proclamation  of  Sir  H.  Smith  in  the  Herald  of  26th  Oct.,  1868. 

||  See  Charles  G-avan  Duffy’s  “  Land  Tenure  of  Australia.” 


168 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


very  mitigated  way  in  these  countries,  is  the  tiller  of 
the  soil  abandoned  to  the  caprices  and  passion  of  a 
heartless  master.  In  Ireland,  for  the  most  part,  this 
master  is  the  spawn  of  a  foreign  intruder  and  spoliator, 
having  no  one  sympathy  in  common  with  his  agrarian 
serf.  In  other  cases  he  is  merely  a  money-making 
speculator — a  mere  “  land  jobber” — who  wrings  all  he 
can  out  of  the  vitals  of  his  slaves;  the  exceptions  of 
just,  considerate,  and  charitable  owners  being 

“•Pauci  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto  ” 

— a  few  floating  in  the  spreading  gulf. 

In  England  there  are  counter  checks  to  the  want  of 
leases  or  lengthened  tenures.  First,  there  are  several 
other  sources  of  industry  to  which  an  evicted  family  can 
at  once  turn  itself.  Next,  there  is  a  healthy,  national, 
powerful  opinion  hostile  to  eviction;  and,  lastly,  the 
landlord  it  is,  and  not  th$  tenant,  who  makes  all  the 
improvements,  from  the  drain  in  the  field,  the  style  in 
the  wall,  to  the  piggery  in  the  yard,  and  the  dwelling 
house.  He  is,  therefore,  sure  not  to  evict  a  solvent  tenant 
without  reasons  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  public  opinion  of 
his  country.  Not  so  in  Ireland.  Regardless  of  mere  Irish 
opinion,  and  hitherto  rather  sustained  than  censured  by  the 
public  opinion  of  England,  the  un-Irish  landlord  has  been 
allowed  to  run  a  course  of  devastation,  never  surpassed, 
hardly  ever  paralleled.  He  has  been  permitted — em¬ 
powered  by  law — to  evict,  in  the  words  of  the  great 
Bishop  of  Orleans,  “  for  a  good  reason,  and  for  a  bad 
reason,  and  for  no  reason  at  all.”  (“  On  evince  done  pour 
des  raisons  politiques ;  on  evince  pour  des  raisons 
economiques  de  toute  sorte;  on  evince  pour  des  raisons 
religieuses  de  toute  sorte ;  on  evince  sans  raison.  Sans 
doute  la  loi  depuis  la  guerre  de  1’  Independence  Ameri- 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


169 


caine,  n’  impose  plus  aux  landlords  1*  obligation  formelle 
d’  opprimer  les  tenanciers ;  mais  elle  les  laisse  complete- 
ment  a  leur  merci.”)* 

Henceforth,  let  us  determine  that,  at  least,  in  future 
the  landlords  must  not  be  permitted  to  evict  from 
religious  or  other  motives,  nor  without  good  and  sub¬ 
stantial  cause. 

*  Discours  prononce  par  Mgr.  L’Eveque  D’ Orleans  en  faveur 
des  pauvres  Catholiques  d’lrlande,  a  Paris,  dans  L’Eglise  de  S. 
Roch  25  Mars.  1S6K 


170 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


/ 


CHAPTER  XL 

ENGLAND  IN  THE  FIFTEENTH,  SIXTEENTH,  AND  SEVEN¬ 
TEENTH  CENTURIES. 


“  It  appeareth  by  the  statute,  4tli  lien.  IV.  c.  2,  that  depopulatores  agrorum 
were  great  offenders  by  the  ancient  law.  They  are  called  depopulatores  agrorum, 
for  that,  by  prostrating  or  decaying  of  the  houses  of  habitation  of  the  king's 
people,  they  depopulate,  that  is,  dispeople  the  towns.” — Coke:  Poulter's  Case, 
ii.  rep.  29,  b. 


Herein  is  expressed  the  fundamental  idea  of  the  English 
common  law  regarding  the  occupation  and  cultivation  of 
the  land.  Both  the  monarch,  exercising  all  his  early 
absolute  control,  and  the  legislature,  by  several  special 
enactments,  for  the  space  of  over  two  centuries,  exerted 
themselves  to  the  utmost  in  arresting  the  plague  of 
depopulation,  which  set  in,  with  more  than  its  usual  de¬ 
structive  force,  shortly  after  the  accession  of  Henry  VII. 
During  the  protracted  “  Wars  of  the  Roses,”  it  was 
partly  the  policy  of  all  the  landowners  to  encourage 
population  in  their  estates — thus  enhancing  their  own 
importance.  To  this  end  they  let  the  land  to  as  many 
and  in  as  minute  divisions  as  could  support  the  popula¬ 
tion.  Had  it  been  otherwise,  had  the  hatchet  and  the 
crowbar  come  to  supplement  the  work  of  the  musket, 
the  spear,  and  the  sword,  the  internecine  conflict  had 
been  previously  decided.  Population — the  real  wealth  of 
every  nation — was  encouraged,  for  the  double  purpose  of 
extracting  sufficient  food  from  the  earth,  and  of  fighting 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


171 


tiie  battles  of  both  sides.  Hence  Coke,  no  mean 
authority,  tells  us  that  “  the  common  law  gives  arable 
land  the  precedency  and  pre-eminency  over  meadows, 
pastures,  ruins,  and  all  other  grounds  whatsoever,”  and 
that  averia  carucce ,  beasts  of  plough,  have,  in  some 
instances,  more  privileges  than  other  cattle  have.*  By 
positive  statute  they  were  liable  to  distress  only  when  all 
other  chattels  failed. t  Jacob,  Tomlin’s,  and  Cunningham’s 
Law  Dictionary  lays  down  that :  “So  careful  is  our  law 
to  preserve  it  (tillage),  that  a  bond  or  restriction  to 
restrain  tillage  or  sowing  of  land  is  void.”J  “  At  common 
law  no  man  could  be  prohibited  from  working  in  any 
lawful  trade,  for  the  law  abhors  idleness,  the  mother  of 
all  evils.”§  I  pray  our  drones  of  Irish  landlords,  whose 
daily  work  is  to  eat,  drink,  smoke,  and  pocket  rent,  to 
ponder  on  this.  And  it  appears  in  2nd  Henry  Y.  that  a 
dyer  was  bound  that  he  should  not  use  the  dyer’s  craft 
for  two  years,  and  then  Hale  held  that  “  the  bond  was 
against  the  common  law,  and,  by  G — d,  if  the  plaintiff 
was  here,  he  should  go  to  prison  until  he  paid  a  fine  to 
the  king;  and  so,  for  the  same  reasons,  if  an  husbandman 
is  bound  that  he  shall  not  sow  his  land,  the  bond  is 
against  the  common  law.”|| 

“  Depopulation,”  says  Cowel’s  “  Interpreter,”  “  is  now 
the  apparent  effect  of  enclosing  lordships  and  manors, 
by  which  means  several  good,  old,  populous  villages  have 
been  reduced  from  a  great  number  of  sufficient  farms  to 
a  few  cottages.”1T 

Coke  applies  the  law  of  37th  Henry  VI.,  46,**  in 

*  4  Rep.,  39. 

t  51  Henry  III.,  de  Districtione  Scaccarii,  and  2S  Ed.  I.,  c.  12. 

%  II.  R,ep.,  53. 

§  Ibid. 

||  Ipswich  Tailor’s  Case,  ii.  Rep. ,  53. 

H  Depopulation. 

**  Plou.  Com.,  in  Nicol’s  Case. 


172 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


reference  to  tlie  breaking  down  of  highways  and  bridges, 
a  portion  to  the  case  of  depopulation,  as  being  “not  only 
in  prejudice  of  the  king,  but  in  damage  of  the  subject.” 
“  The  same  law,”  says  he,  “  applies,  and  a  multo  fortiori , 
in  the  case  of  depopulation,  for  this  is  not  only  an  offence 
against  the  king,  but  against  all  the  realm  :  for  by  this 
all  the  realm  is  infeebled ;  idle  and  dissolute  people, 
which  are  enemies  to  the  commonwealth,  abound ;  and 
for  this  cause ,  depopulation  and  diminution  of  subjects 
is  a  greater  nuisance  and  offence  to  the  real  public ,  than 
the  hindrance  of  subjects  in  their .  good  and  easy  passage 
by  any  bridge  or  highway ;  and  for  this,  notwithstanding 
the  pardon  of  the  Icing,  he  shall  be  bound  to  re-edify  the 
houses  of  husbandry  which  he  hath  depopulated ;  but, 
peradventure,  for  the  time  before  the  pardon  he  will  not 
be  fined,  but,  for  the  time  after,  he  shall,  without  doubt, 
be  fined  and  imprisoned,  for  the  offence  itself  cannot  be 
pardoned,  as  in  case  of  a  bridge  and  highway,  quia  ma¬ 
lum  in  se  !” — “  because  it  is  an  evil  in  itself  ”  /  /  /  *  Thus 
did  Coke  apply  the  law  of  37th  Henry  YI.  about  high¬ 
ways  and  bridges  to  “  the  case  of  depopulation.” 

From  the  foregoing  we  can  easily  glean  how  zealously 
agricultural  pursuits  were  encouraged,  and  obstructions 
to  them,  on  the  part  of  the  land-sharks  of  the  day,  made 
liable  to  the  severest  penalties,  even  while  the  kingdom 
was  yet  rent  asunder  by  the  deadly  and  ever-recurring 
conflict  between  the  great  contending  houses  of  Lancaster 
and  York. 

However,  lust  of  land  was  even  then  gradually  making 
its  fatal  inroads  on  the  wise  provisions  of  the  common 
law ;  and  to  such  a  pitch  had  the  evil  extended  itself,  in 
the  very  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  that  we  find 
John  Eous,  the  "  celebrated  monk  and  antiquary  of  War- 


*  12  Kep.  30. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


1  to 
1  i  o 

wick,  and  author  of  a  History  of  the  Kings  of  England, 
presenting  a  petition  to  parliament,  in  1450,  against  the 
system  of  depopulation,  even  then  extensively  practised. 
Within  twelve  miles  of  his  town  of  Warwick,  he 
tells  of  no  less  than  sixty-five  other  towns  or  hamlets  re¬ 
duced  to  ruin;  and  while  he  bewails  the  calamities  thence 
likely  to  accrue  to  the  country,  he  invokes  the  vengeance 
of  God  on  1  the  basilisks,  whose  devouring  eyes  consume 
all  they  fall  upon,’  and  who,  as  ‘  destroyers  of  towns,’ 
are  more  culpable  than  thieves,  whom  the  law  condemns 
to  be  hanged.”  He  quotes  stringent  passages  from  the 
civil  law  against  depopulation,  and  from  the  canon  law 
shows  that  only  to  two  classes  of  malefactors  does  the 
Church  deny  the  right  of  sanctuary,  and  benefit  of 
clergy* — public  robbers,  and  devastators  of  lands  and 
highways.  “  Scilicet  latronem  publicum  et  devastatorem 
agrorum  et  viarum.”]- 

But  it  would  appear  that  it  was  not  alone  while  living 
that  the  Church  visited  them  with  her  censure ;  it  pur¬ 
sued  them  after  death,  and  condemned  them  to  exclusion 
from  Christian  burial ;  inasmuch  as,  having  withdrawn 
themselves  from  the  society  of  men  during  life  by  the 
destruction  of  dwellings,  they  were  unworthy  of  com¬ 
munion  with  them  after  death,  and  only  fit  for  other 
society,  as  follows  :  “  You  oppressors  of  the  poor,”  he 
cries  out,  “  you  destroyers  of  towns,  who  unjustly  possess 
the  lands  of  free  tenants,  driving  them  from  the  hereditary 
seats  of  their  fathers,  grandfathers,  great-grand-fathers, 
and  great-great- grand-fathers,  and  exposing  them  to  beg¬ 
gary,  theft,  and  other  miseries ;  the  world  hates  you  for  this 
— God  and  all  the  host  of  heaven  detest  your  infamous 
society,  and  the  devil  only,  with  his  satellites,  can  with 
pleasure  admit  you  into  his  company.”J 

*  Poulter’s  case,  ii. ,  rep.  29. 

X  Ibid.,  p.  95. 


t  History,  p.  88,  &c. 


174 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


He  applies  to  them  all  the  Scriptural  denunciations 
of  the  oppressors  of  the  poor,  and  predicts  for  them  the 
fate  of  Naboth,  Achab,  and  the  like,  and  narrates  certain 
instances  of  signal  chastisement  on  the  clepopulators 
crime. 

Quoting  from  the  Institutes  and  Decretals ,  he  preceded 
Sadleir,and  Kay,  and  Thornton,  and  Mill,  by  four  hundred 
years,  in  demonstrating  that  depopulation  was  opposed  to 
every  principle  of  sound  policy  in  a  state — which  should 
ever  consider  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number, 
and  not  sacrifice  that  to  the  selfish  interests  of  a  few — 
as  it  was  to  all  the  dictates  of  humanity  and  charity,  and 
to  the  blessing  of  God  himself,  conveyed  in  the  words  : 
“  Increase  and  multiply  and  replenish  the  earth.” 

It  would  appear,  however,  that,  then  as  now,  the  flip¬ 
pant  fallacy,  “  a  man  can  do  what  he  likes  with  his  own,” 
was  the  only  answer  to  the  arguments  and  intreaties  of 
the  benevolent  monk,  and  this  he  demolishes  by  reply¬ 
ing  that  a  man  cannot  justly  intoxicate  himself  with  his 
own  wine,  or  cut  his  throat  with  his  own  knife,  and  so, 
likewise,  neither  can  he  use  his  own  land  to  the  detri¬ 
ment  of  the  many  and  of  the  public ;  he  says  they  are 
more  dangerous  than  madmen,  who  are  carefully  deprived 
of  weapons  of  destruction;  and  that,  as  certain  games  are 
forbidden  by  law,  so  should  the  mischievous  game  of 
depopulation.  In  fact,  he  calls  the  depopulators  outlaws, 
to  perish  as  such,  quoting  St.  Paul  to  the  Romans,  “  He 
•who  lives  without  the  law  shall  perish  without  the  law.” 
Finally,  he  calls  upon  the  king  to  interpose  for  the  rescue 
of  his  subjects,  and  thus,  with  God’s  blessing,  merit  the 
good  will  of  man  here,  and  an  eternal  reward  hereafter.* 

The  natural  results  of  such  excesses  were  repeated 
risings  in  several  parts  of  the  kingdom — risings,  by  the 
way,  suppressed  in  their  earlier  stages  with  mildness,  and 


*  Ibid.,  pp.  113,  137. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


175 


palliated  as  follows  by  Fortescue,  Chancellor  of  Eng¬ 
land  :  “  Nothing  may  make  the  people  rise  but  lacke  of 
goods  or  lacke  of  justice  ;  but  yet,  certainly,  when  they 
lacke  goods  they  will  arise,  saying  they  lacke  justice;  never¬ 
theless,  if  they  be  not  poor  they  will  never  arise,  but 
if  their  prince  so  leve  justice  that  he  gyve  himself  al  to 
tyrannye.”*  The  legislature  had,  therefore,  to  interpose, 
though  the  provisions  of  the  common  law  were — as  they 
seem  to  be  in  this  country  to-day,  if  enforced — quite  ade¬ 
quate  to  the  emergency,  if  onty  honestly  administered 
by  local  magistrates  ;  but  these  gentlemen  being  them¬ 
selves  in  many  cases  pre-eminent  among  the  misdemean¬ 
ants,  the  law  became  a  dead  letter,  and  depopulation, 
beggary,  thievery,  agrarian  risings,  with  the  constant 
occupation  of  thehangman,  continuedas  the  natural  result. 

The  evil  became  doubly  aggravated  on  the  termination 
of  the  “  Wars  of  the  Eoses  ”  at  the  accession  of  HenryVII. 
The  old  “  masters  ”  only  scourged  with  iron ;  the  new 
patentees  of  forfeited  estates  began  to  scourge  with 
scorpions.  After  all,  in  a  great  many  cases  between  the 
former  owners  and  occupiers  of  the  soil — (I  confess  I 
dislike  that  phrase  “  owner  of  the  soil.”  The  person  who 
usurps  that  title  is  in  reality  only  trustee  for  the  public 
weal,  and  may,  for  the  public  weal,  by  public  authority, 
be  stripped  of  his  trust  when  he  neglects  or  abuses  it  to 
the  detriment  of  the  public)— there  existed  more  or 
less  of  mutual  friendly  feeling  and  sympathy  of  quasi 
clanship.  Now,  however,  a  great  deal  of  that  was  changed. 
Like  the  Elizabethian  and  Cromwellian  settlers  in  Ireland, 
and  the  land  jobbers  of  this  day,  the  Lancastrian  in¬ 
truders  looked  upon  the  tenants  they  found  in  the  soil 
only  as  so  much  chattel,  without  the  smallest  interest  or 
right  as  men  ;  besides,  during  the  wars  a  nobleman’s  or 
other  proprietor’s  influence  depended  not  a  little  on 

*  “Absolute  and  Limited  Monarchy,”  c.  12. 


176 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  number  of  armed  retainers  he  could  marshal  under 
his  banner  on  field  or  muster  day.  These  joint  consider¬ 
ations  tended  not  a  little  to  check  the  otherwise  insatiate 
land-thirst  which  threatened  to  dry  up  the  country. 
Now,  however,  all  restraints  and  all  motives  for  restraint 
had  vanished  in  the  field  of  Bosworth,  and  depopu¬ 
lation  was  becoming  the  order  of  the  day.  The  legis¬ 
lature  at  length  interposes,  and  the  4th  Henry  VII. 
declares  the  system  of  depopulation  subversive  of  the 
policy  and  good  government  of  the  realm,  for,  “  by  these 
enormyties  and  mysschefes  the  king’s  pease  is  broken,  his 
subjects  disquieted  and  impoverished,  the  husbondre  of 
the  londe  decayed ;  whereby  the  Churche  of  England  is  up- 
liolden,  the  Service  of  God  continued,  every  man  hath 
sustenance,  and  every  inheritor  his  rent  for  his  londe  it 
then  passes  censure  on  the  magistrates,  as  the  people  “  were 
,  litell  eased  of  the  said  myschefes  by  said  justices,  but 
by  many  of  them  rather  hurt  than  helped.” 

This  was  not  the  first  statute  against  depopulation. 
As  we  have  seen,  the  4th  Hen.  IY.  wras  no  less  express, 
although  it  extended  benefit  of  clergy  to  clergymen, 
themselves  guilty  of  the  “  felonious  act.”  And  we  can¬ 
not  but  contrast  the  palliating  tone  in  which  great 
Englishmen  referred  to  the  excesses  of  the  people  of 
England  in  “ breaking  the  king’s  pease,7’  with  the  fire  - 
and-brimstone  denunciations  of  any  the  slightest  vio¬ 
lence  or  “  outrage,”  as  it  is  called,  attempted  now-a-days 
against  the  heartless  depopulator ! 

The  statute  of  Henry  VII.,  after  complaining  that  the 
Isle  of  Wight  had  been  depopulated,  towns  and  villages 
let  down,  lands  enclosed  for  cattle,  and  many  dwellings 
and  farms  monopolized  by  one  occupier,  while  “  of  old 
tyme  they  were  wont  to  be  in  many  and  several  persons’ 
holdes  and  handes,  and  many  several  housekoldes  kept 
in  them,  and  thereby  moch  people  multiplied,  and  the 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


177 


same  isle  thereby  well  inhabited,  the  which  now,  by  the 
occasion  aforesaid,  is  desolate  and  not  inhabited,  but  occu¬ 
pied  with  bestes  and  catal,  so  that  if  hasty  remedy  be  not 
provided,  that  isle  cannot  be  long  Tcepte  and  defended , 
but  open  to  the  handes  of  king’s  ennemyes  ;  ”  and  con¬ 
sequently  that  in  future  “  the  ferme  of  them  alto- 
gidre  ”  should  not  exceed  ten  meres ;  that  whosoever 
held  more,  should,  before  Michaelmas,  1490,  select  which 
to  retain,  “  the  remenant  to  cease,  and  be  utterly 
void,”  the  occupier  to  be  discharged  of  the  rent,  but  en¬ 
titled  to  compensation  for  repairs  and  buildings,  “  as  right 
and  good  conscience  requiren.” 

Hear  ye  that,  ye  “  sacred  rights  of  property  ”  de. 
claimers !  Just  380  years  ago,  an  English  parliament 
proscribing  strict  limits  to  “  holdes  and  fermes,”  and 
“confiscating”  the  remainder,  for  the  public  weal!!! 
As  in  time,  so  in  wisdom  was  it  380  years  in  advance  of 
its  progeny  of  1869.  Perhaps,  however,  not — the  ides 
of  March  are  not  yet  over. 

Another  act  of  the  same  session  complains  that  “great 
inconveniences  daily  doth  encrease  by  desolacion,  and 
pulling  down,  and  wilful  waste  of  houses  and  townes 
within  this  realme,  and  leyeng  to  pasture  landes  which 
custumabely  have  been  used  in  tylthe,  whereby  ydle- 
ness,  grounde  and  beginning  of  all  myschaefs,  dayly 
doth  encrease ;  for  where  in  some  townes  two  hundred 
personcs  were  occupied  and  lived  by  their  lawful  labours, 
nowe  be  there  occupied  two  or  three  herdmen,  and  the 
residue  fall  in  ydleness ;  the  husbandrie,  which  is  one 
of  the  greatest  commodities  of  this  realme,  is  gretly 
decaied,  churches  destroyed,  the  service  of  God  with- 
drawen,the  bodies  there  buried  not  praiedfor,  the  patrone 
and  curates  wronged,  the  defence  of  this  land  ageyn  owre 
ennemyes  outwardes  feebled  and  impaired ;  ”  and  then 
prescribes  that  persons  having,  within  the  three  years 


M 


178 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


previous,  twenty  acres,  or  more,  of  land  let  in  tillage, 
should  keep  “  houses  and  buildings  upon  the  seid  ground, 
and  lond  necessary  for  mayntenyng  and  upholdynge  of 
the  said  tillage  and  husbandrie,”  on  the  penalty  of  for¬ 
feiting  half  the  profits  of  the  farm  to  the  king,  or  next 
owner  in  fee. 

Nor  was  this  any  innovation,  or  anything  more  than 
a  statutable  declaration  of  the  common  law,  such  as  we 
have  seen. 

Lord  Bacon,  who  designates  the  act  as  “  profound  and 
admirable,”  thus  describes  its  effects  :  “  By  this  means 
the  houses  being  kept  up,  did  of  necessity  enforce  a 
dweller,  and  the  preparation  of  land  for  occupation  being 
kept  up,  did  of'  necessity  enforce  that  dweller  not  to  be 
a  beggar  or  cottager,  but  a  man  of  some  substance,  that 
might  keep  hinds  and  servants,  and  set  the  plough  on 
going.  This  did  wonderfully  concern  the  might  and 
mannerhood  of  the  kingdom,  to  have  farms  as  it  were  of 
a  standard  sufficient  to  maintain  an  able  bod}7-  out  of 
penury,  and  did,  in  effect,  amortise  a  great  part  of  the 
lands  of  the  kingdom  into  the  hold  and  occupation  of  the 
yeomanry,  or  middle  people  of  condition  between  gentle¬ 
men  and  cottagers,  or  peasants.”"'  Recurring  to  the  sub¬ 
ject  elsewhere,  he  applauds  “  as  a  master-stroke  of  policy  ” 
the  maintaining  of  houses  of  husbandry,  as  provided  by 
the  statutes,  “  with  such  proportion  of  land  unto  them  as 
may  breed  a  subject  to  live  in  convenient  plenty,  and  to 
keep  the  plough  in  the  hands  of  the  owners ,  or  at  least 
usufructuary,  and  not  hirelings  and  mercenaries,  and 
thus  a  country  shall  merit  that  character  whereby  Virgil 
expresses  ancient  Italy,  ever  recurring  to  the  same  idea: — 

“  ‘  Terra  potens,  armis,  atque  ubere  gleba.”f 

*  “Life  of  Henry  VII.,”  pp.  63,  64. 

t  See  Preface  to  vol.  iii.  of  his  works,  by  Basil  Montagu, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


179 


Depopulation,  however,  went  on  apace,  so  that  parlia¬ 
ment  had  again  to  interpose ;  and  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  two  special  acts,  one  temporary,  or  for  a  limited 
period,*  the  other  permanent, f  were  passed  against  “  en¬ 
closures,”  and  consequent  depopulation, “whereby  idleness 
doth  increase ;  for  where  in  some  towns  cc.  persons, 
men,  women,  and  children,  and  their  ancestours  out 
of  tyme  of  mynde,  were  dayly  occupied  and  lyved 
by  sowing  it  of  corne  and  graynes,  feedyng  of  catall,  and 
other  encrease  necessarye  for  many’s  sustenance,  and 
now  the  said  persons  and  their  progenyes  be  myn- 
yshed  and  decreasycl,  whereby  the  husbandrye,  which 
is  the  greatest  commoditie  of  this  realme  for  sustenance 
of  man,  ys  greatly  decayed,  churches  destroyed,  cities, 
market  townes,  brought  to  great  ruin  and  decaye ; 
necessaries  for  many’s  sustenance  made  scarce  and  dere ; 
the  people  sore  mynyshed  in  this  realme,  whereby  the 
powre  and  defence  thereof  is  febled  and  empayred,  to  the 
displeasure  of  God  and  against  his  laws,  and  to  the  sub¬ 
version  of  the  common  weale  of  this  realme,  and  the  deso- 
lacion  of  the  same.”  And  it  then  orders  that  the  owners 
of  houses  or  hamlets  “  occupied  to  tillage  and  husbandry,” 
that  should,  thenceforth,  and  after  the  first  day  of  parlia¬ 
ment,  be  suffered  to  fall  into  decay,  should  restore  them 
at  their  own  cost,  so  as  to  be  “  mete  and  convenient  for 
people  to  dwelle  and  inhabite  in  the  same  and  that  all 
tillage  lands  “  enclosed  and  turned  into  pasture,”  within 
the  same  date,  should  be  restored  to  tillage  under  pain  of 
forfeiture  of  half  the  produce  to  the  next  lord  of  the  fee, 
or,  in  case  he  neglected  to  enforce  the  law,  “  to  the  next 
immediate  lord  above  them.” 

But  these  “lords  in  fee  ”  proving,  like  their  Irish  fellows 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  worse  than  neglectful  of  the  duty 


*  6th  Henry  VIII.,  c.  5. 


t  7th  Henry  VI1L,  c.  6. 


180 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


imposed  on  them,  in  twenty  years  after  the  half  produce 
forfeited  by  law  was  transferred  from  them  to  the  crown. 
A  limit  was  also  put  to  the  number  of  sheep  and  farms, 
2,000  of  the  one,  and  two  of  the  other,  “  unless  he  be 
dwellyng  within  the  parishes  where  such  holdings  be.” 

The  following  preamble  is  well  worth  attention — the 
attention  of  the  land  sharks  of  Ireland  of  the  present 
day:  “  For  as  moche  as  dy  vers  and  sundry  persons  of 
the  kynge’s  subjectes  of  this  realme,  to  whom  God  of  hys 
goodness  hath  disposed  greate  plentie  and  abundance  of 
movable  substance,  nowe  of  late  within  fewe  years  have  dayly 
study  ed, practised,  and  invented  ways  and  means  how  they  might 
accumulate  and  gather  together  into  few  hands,  as  well  great 
multitude  of  fermes,  as  great  plenty  of  catall,  and,  in  especial, 
shepe,  putting  such  landes  as  they  can  get  to  pasture  and  not 
to  tillage,  whereby  they  have  not  only  pulled .  down  churches 
and  townes,  and  inhansed  the  old  rates  of  the  rentes  of  the 
possessions  of  the  realme,  or  else  brought  it  to  such  excessive 
fines  that  no  poure  man  is  able  to  medell  with  it,  but  also 
have  raysed  and  inhansed  the  prises  of  all  manner  of 
corne,  catall,  woll,  pigges,  geese,  hennes,  chekynes,  eggs, 
and  such  other,  almost  double  above  the  prises  which 
have  been  accustomed  ;  by  reason  whereof  a  mervaylous 
multitude  and  nornbre  of  the  people  of  this  realme  be  not  able 
to  provide  meate,  drynke,  and  clothes  necessary  for  them¬ 
selves,  their  wyves,  and  children,  but  be  so  discouraged 
with  misery  and  povertie  that  they  fall  dayly  to  thefte, 
robberie,  or  other  inconvenience,  or  pitifully  die  for  hunger 
and  colde.  And,  as  it  is  thought  by  the  kynge’s  most 
humble  and  loving  subjects,  that  one  of  the  greatest 
occasions  that  moveth  and  provoketh  these  greedy  and 
covetous  people  so  to  accumulate  and  keep  in  theire  hands 
suche  greate  portions  and  parties  of  the  grounds  and  landes 
of  this  realme  from  the  occupying  of  the  poure  husband¬ 
man,  and  so  to  use  it  in  pasture  and  not  in  tillage,  is  * 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


181 


only  the  great  profette  that  commyth  of  shepe,  which 
now  be  commyn  to  a  few  persons’  handes  of  this  realme,  in 
respecte  of  the  holle  number  of  the  kynge’s  subjectes, 
that  some  have  xxiiii  thousand,  some  xx  thousand,  some 
x  thousand,  some  vi  thousand,  some  v  thousand,  and 
some  more,  and  some  less,  by  the  which  a  good  shepe 
vytall  that  was  accustomed  to  be  solde  for  iis.  iiii d.  or  iiis. 
at  the  moste,  is  now  solde  for  vis.,  or  vs.,  or  iiiis.  at 
leaste,”  and,  in  consequence,  the  extent  of  farms  and  the 
number  of  sheep  in  each  one’s  hands  were  limited  as  above. 

It  was  a  desperate  remedy,  but  not  less  so  was  the  disease ; 
and  so  the  English  legislature  of  350  years  ago,  acting  on 
the  evident  maxim  that  the  duty  of  government  is  to 
seek  the  greater  good  of  the  greater  number,  hesitated 
not  to  prescribe  such  limits  to  consolidation  and  sheep¬ 
walking  as  the  emergency  required.  Such  interposition 
with  “  the  rights  of  property”  in  Ireland  at  this  day  would 
be  branded  as  “  robbery,  socialism,  and  confiscation.”’ 

But  the  consolidators  found  means,  in  most  instances,  , 
to  evade  the  law;  some  even  by  bribing  Wolsey  to  grant 
them  licenses  to  continue  the  enclosures.*  Then  came 
the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  the  alienation  and 
confiscation  of  their  lands,  the  eviction  of  their  tenants, 
and  the  conversion  of  their  lands  to  pasture,  though  the 
statute  (27th  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  28)  provided  that  the  new 
owners  of  the  monastic  property  should  keep  as  much  of 
the  land  in  tillage  as  had  been  so  kept  within  the  twenty 
preceding  years. 

The  result  of  both  these  causes  combined — the  confis¬ 
cation  of  the  abbey  lands  with  the  onward  march  of 
consolidation — was  soon  such  as  might  be  foreseen. 
England  became  a  nation  of  beggars,  robbers,  and 
thieves,  so  much  so,  that,  before  Henry’s  death,  and 


*  “ Hollingslied,”  vol.  ii.  862. 


182 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


during  his  reign,  72,000  victims  of  consolidation  were 
hanged  as  thieves,  twenty  being  often  dangling  at  once 
from  the  same  gallows  tree.'"  Strype  thus  pictures  the 
fearful  pass  to  which  the  covetousness  of  the  rich  had, 
during  this  reign,  reduced  the  masses  of  the  people  : — 
“Both  the  gentry  and  the  clergy,”  writes  he,  “grew 
extremely  covetous.  As  for  the  lay  sort,  they  fell  to 
raising  their  old  rents,  turned  their  arable  land  into 
pasture  for  grazing  sheep,  and  enclosed  commons,  to  the 
great  oppression  of  the  poor.”  (One  would  fancy  he  was 
talking  of  the  National  Building  and  Land  Investment 
Company — “raising  rents,  enclosing  commons,”  &c.) 
“  This  may  be  best  understood,”  continues  he,  “  by 
reading  what  one  writes  who  lived  in  those  days.  1  How 
do  the  rich  men,  and,  especially,  such  as  the  sheep 
mongers,  oppress  the  king’s  liege  people  by  devouring  their 
common  pasture  with  tlieir  sheep ,  so  that  the  poor  are  not 
able  to  keep  a  cow  for  the  comfort  of  them  and  of  their 
poor  families,  but  are  like  to  starve  and  perish  for  hunger 
if  there  be  not  provision  made  shortly.  What  sheep- 
ground  scapeth  these  caterpillars  of  the  commonwealth  ] 
How  swarm  they  with  abundance  of  flocks  and  sheep  h 
....  If  these  sheepmongers  go  forth  as  they  begin,  the 
people  shall  both  miserably  die  for  cold,  and  wretchedly 

perish  for  hunger . Bich  men  were  never  so  much 

estranged  from  all  pity  and  compassion  towards  poor 
people  as  they  be  at  this  present  time.’  (Swift  said  of 
those  of  his  day  that  they  had  not  ‘  one  degree  of  mercy.’) 
c  They  devour  the  people  as  it  were  a  morsel  of  bread. 
If  any  piece  of  ground  delight  their  eye ,  they  must  needs 
have  it,  either  by  hook  or  by  crook.  If  the  poor  man 
will  not  satisfy  their  covetous  desires,  he  is  sure  to  be 
molested,  troubled,  and  disquieted,  or  such  sort,  that 


*  Fortescue,  “  De  land  leg.  Angl.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


183 


whether  he  will  or  not  (though  both  he,  the  careful 
wife,  and  miserable  children  perish  for  hunger),  he  shall 
forego  it,  or  else  it  were  as  good  for  him  to  live  among 
the  furies  of  hell  as  to  dwell  by  those  rich  cards  and 
covetous  churls.’  This  writer,”  continues  Strype,  “  pro¬ 
ceeds  to  say,  that,  by  the  depopulating  system,  whole 
towns  became  desolate,  and  like  to  a  wilderness  tra¬ 
versed  only  by  a  shepherd  and  his  dog,  and  that  he 
himself  knew  ‘  many  towns  and  villages  sore  decayed, 
so  that  whereas  in  time  past  there  were  in  some  towns 
an  hundred  households,  now  there  remained  not  thirty ; 
in  some  fifty,  there  were  not  ten ;  yea,  which  was  more 
to  be  lamented,  some  towns  so  wholly  destroyed,  that 
there  was  not  stick  nor  stone  standing,  as  they  used  to 
say,  where  many  men  had  good  livings  and  maintained 
hospitality,  able  at  all  times  to  help  the  king  in  his 
wars,  and  to  sustain  other  charges  ;  able  also  to  help 
their  poor  neighbors,  and  to  bring  up  their  children  in 
godly  letters  and  good  sciences  ;  now  sheep  and  cowes 
devour  altogether,  no  man  inhabiting  the  foresaid  places, 
so  that  those  beasts  which  were  bred  of  God  for  the  nourish¬ 
ment  of  man ,  do  now  devour  man .’  Those  ‘  greedy  wolves 
and  cumberous  cormorants,’  as  he  styles  the  sheep- 
masters  and  feeders  of  cattle,  *  abhorred  the  names  of 
monks,  friars,  canons,  nuns,  &c.,  but  their  goods  they 
speedily  griped  ;  and  yet,  where  the  cloisters  kept  hospi¬ 
tality,  let  out  their  farms  at  a  reasonable  price,  nourished 
schools,  brought  up  youth  in  good  letters,  they  did  none 
of  all  these  things’  ”*■ — the  character  given  by  Alison  of 
the  Spanish  monks.  The  same  author  also  refers  to  a 
small  production  which  appeared  in  1546,  called  “A 
supplication  of  the  poor  commons,”  with  “  A  petition  of 
the  beggars,”  addressed  to  the  king,  from  which  he  quotes 


*  Strype,  “Eccles.  Memoirs,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  60,  &c. 


184 


THE  IRISH  LANLLORD 


as  follows  :  “  Instead  of  these  sturdy  beggars  (monks  and 
friars)  there  is  crept  in  a  sturdy  sort  of  extortioners;  those 
men  cease  not  to  oppress  us,  your  highness’  poor 
commons,  in  such  sort  that  many  thousand  of  us,  which 
herebefore  lived  honestly  upon  our  sore  labour  and 
travail,  bringing  up  our  children  in  the  exercise  of  honest 
labour,  are  now  constrained — some  to  beg,  some  to 
borrow,  some  to  rob  and  steal,  to  get  food  for  us  and 
our  poor  wives  and  children.  And,  what  is  most  like  to 
grow  to  inconvenience,  we  are  constrained  to  suffer  our 
children  to  spend  the  flower  of  their  youth  in  idleness, 
bringing  them  up,  other  to  bear  wallets,  other  else,  if 
they  be  sturdy,  to  stuff  prisons  and  garnish  gallows  trees. 
For  such  of  us  as  have  no  professions  left  to  us  by  our 
predecessors  and  elders  departed  this  life,  can  now 
get  no  tenement  or  cottage  at  these  men's  hands ,  without  ice 
jpay  unto  them  more  than  we  are  able  to  make.  Yea, 
this  was  tolerable  so  long  as,  after  this  extreme  exaction,  we 
were  not  for  the  residue  of  our  years  oppressed  with  much 
greater  rents  than  hath  of  ancient  times  been  paid  for  the 
same  grounds.  For  then  a  man  might,  within  a  few  years, 
be  able  to  recover  the  fine,  and  afterwards  live  honestly 
by  his  travail ;  but  now  these  extortioners  have  so  improved 
their  lands  that  they  take,  if  40s.  fine,  £40,  and  if  5  nobles 
rent,  £5.  Yet,  not  sufficed  with  this  oppression  within 
their  own  inheritance,  they  buy,  at  your  highness’  hand, 
such  abbey  lands  as  you  appoint  to  be  sold.  And  when  they 
stand  once  seized  thereon,  they  make  us,  your  poor  commons , 
so  in  doubt  of  their  threatenings,  that  we  dare  do  none 
other  than  bring  into  their  courts  our  copies  taken  of  the 
convents  and  of  the  late  dissolved  monasteries,  and  con¬ 
firmed  by  your  high  court  of  parliament.  They  make  us 
believe  that,  by  virtue  of  your  highness,  all  our  former 
writings  are  void  and  of  no  effect,  and  that  if  we  will 
not  take  new  leases  of  them  we  must  forthwith  avoid 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


1S5 


the  grounds  as  having  therein  no  interest.”*  Just  as  the 
National  Building  and  Land  Investment  Company  “op¬ 
pressed  with  much  greater  rents,”  and  “  made  believe 
that  all  former  writings  are  void,  and  of  no  effect 
and  thus  made  their  serfs  sign  that  series  of  “adroit 
papers”  and  degrading  engagements  revealed  at  the 
recent  trial,  “  JVLCulloch  v.  Knox,”  in  the  Court  of 
Queen’s  Bench,  Dublin.  But  our  modern  “  oppres- 
sioners”  and  land-jobbers  must  get  the  prize  in  “  adroit¬ 
ness.”  For,  while  the  olden  tribe,  on  'obtaining  the 
surrender  of  the  former  leases,  got  the  tenants  “to  take 
by  indenture  for  twenty- one  years,  covering  both  fines 
and  rents  beyond  all  reason  and  conscience,”  the  com¬ 
pany  referred  to  first  extort  possession,  and  then  reduce 
the  tenant-at-will  that  was  to  the  wretched  condition  of 
a  caretaker,  in  which,  as  such,  he  has,  in  the  words  of 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice  Whiteside,  “  no  right  whatso¬ 
ever.”! 

Having  stated  their  case,  the  “petitioners”  and  “beg¬ 
gars”  thus  appeal  to  the  king:  “Help,  merciful  prince, 
in  this  extremity.  .  .  .  Employ  your  study  to  leave  him 
(the  young  prince)  a  common  weal  to  govern,  and  not  an 
island  of  brute  beasts  (a  “fruitful  mother  of  flocks  and 
herds”),  among  whom  the  strongest  devour  the  weaker. 
If  you  suffer  Christ’s  poor  members  to  be  thus  oppressed, 
look  for  none  other  than  the  rightful  judgment  of  God, 
for  your  negligence  in  your  office  and  ministry.  For  the 
blood  of  all  them  that,  through  your  negligence,  shall 
perish,  shall  be  required  at  your  hands.  .  .  i  Endanger 
not  your  soul,  by  the  suffering  your  poor  commons  to 
be  brought  all  to  the  name  of  beggars  and  most  miserable 
wretches.  .  .  .  Prevent  the  subtle  imaginations  of  them 

*  Strype’s  “  Ecc.  Memoirs,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  60,  &c. 

t  Trial  of  M'Culloch  v.  Knox,  Appendix. 


186 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


that  gaily  look  after  the  crown  of  these  realms  after  your 
days.  For  what  greater  hope  can  they  have,  as  concern¬ 
ing  that  detestable  imagination,  than  that  they  might  win 
the  hearts  of  us  from  the  captivity  and  misery  that  we  are 
in”  * 

Have  these  words  any  application  in  Ireland  to-day  1 
Would  the  Irish  “  beggar”  even  pronounce  “  detestable” 
the  u  imagination”  referred  to  above  1  And  if  not,  is 
not  the  minister  of  the  hour  bound  to  ask  why  ?  And, 
should  he  discover  that  the  rude  exercise  of  territorial 
power,  the  system  of  rack-renting,  tenancy-at-will,  evic¬ 
tion,  browbeating,  consolidating,  has  had  no  small  share 
in  fostering  “  imaginations”  of  the  sort,  is  it  not  his  duty 
to  at  once  apply  the  remedy,  and  at  length  play  the 
Stein  and  Hardenberg  in  this  country  ?  The  crisis  is 
fast  approaching.  The  “  poor  commons”  of  Ireland  are 
now  sending  forth  the  same  prayer  for  justice,  so  long 
denied,  that  those  of  England  did  over  three  hundred 
years  ago.  A  few  months  will  tell  whether  “  the  peti¬ 
tion  of  the  poor  commons”  shall  be  treated  like  all  its 
predecessors,  and  full,  free  scope  still  permitted  to  the 
Irish  angel  of  destruction — the  “  extortioner,”  rack-rent¬ 
ing,  exterminating,  no-security-giving,  and,  the  worst  of 
all,  “landjobbing”  landlord. 

i 

*  Strype,  ibid.,  pp.  615-1S. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


187 


I 


CHAPTER  XII. 


“  When  property  was  first  instituted,  the  institution  was  not  intended  to  operate 
to  the  destruction  of  any;  therefore,  when  such  consequences  would  follow,  all 
regard  to  property  is  superseded.” 

“The  introduction  of  property  was  consented  to  by  mankind  upon  the  expecta¬ 
tion  and  condition  that  there  should  be  left  to  every  one  a  sufficiency  for  his 
subsistence,  or  the  means  of  procuring  it.  And,  therefore,  when  the  partition  of 
property  is  rigidly  maintained  against  the  claims  of  indigence  and  distress,  it  is 
maintained  in  opposition  to  the  intention  of  those  who  made  it,  and  of  Him  who 
is  the  supreme  proprietor  of  everything,  and  who  has  filled  the  earth  with  plen¬ 
teousness  for  the  sustentation  and  comfort  of  all  whom  He  has  sent  into  it.” — 
Paley's  “  Moral  Philos.,"  b.  ii.,  c.  xi.,  b.  v.,  c.  iii. 


Edward  was  not  appealed  to  in  vain.  What  with  pub¬ 
lic  sermons  in  his  royal  presence,  public  pamphlets  by 
his  favored  divines,  public  royal  proclamations,  and  pub¬ 
lic  commissions  of  his  judges,  he,  to  some  extent,  miti¬ 
gated,  though  he  failed  to  arrest,  the  growing  evil.  The 
“  graziers  ”  continued  to  “  consolidate,”  the  “  cleared  off  ” 
continued  to  rise,  and  the  sword  and  the  halter  continued 
their  familiar  employments  of  the  preceding  reign.  Like 
the  Irish  peasant  of  the  present  day,  the  unfortunate 
English  outcasts  of  these  times  “  had  a  wonderful  hate 
against  gentlemen,  and  took  them  all  as  their  enemies.”* 
And  thus,  as  with  us  now,  did  the  good  come  in  for  the 
odium  and  violence  provoked  by  the  bad. 

“But,”  says  Edward  himself,  “most  part  of  true 

*  Letter  of  the  Protector  to  SirP.  Hoby,  Strype.,  “Ecc.  Mem.” 
v.  ii. ,  part  2,  p.  425. 


188 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


gentlemen  (I  mean  not  those  farming  gentlemen  and 
clocking  knights)  have  little  or  nothing  increased  their 
rents.  The  state  of  landed  men  is  ill  looked  to ;  for 
that  estate  of  gentlemen  and  noblemen  which  is  truly 
to  be  termed  the  estate  of  nobles  hath  alonely  not  in¬ 
creased  the  gain  of  living,”  while  “  the  husbandmen  and 
farmers  take  their  ground  at  a  small  rent,  and  dwell  not 
on  it,  but  let  it  to  poor  men  for  triple  the  rent  they  take 
it  for.  .  .  .  The  farmer  will  have  ten  farms,  some  twenty, 
and  will  be  pedlar  merchant.”  *  The  same  system  of 
middlemanism  that  generated  Whiteboyism,  and  contri¬ 
buted  so  largely  to  “  garnish  the  gallows  tree  ”  in  this 
country  towards  the  close  of  the  last  century,  and  in 
part  of  this — the  same  system  of  land-jobbing  that  has, 
in  many  instances,  doubled  the  rents  in  Ireland,  and 
left  landlords  and  agents  low,  within  the  last  twenty 
years. 

blight  not  the  following  language  of  Latimer  be  spoken 
from  any  pulpit  in  this  country  to-day  1  “Eestore  them 
sufficient  unto  them,  and  search  no  more  the  cause  of  re¬ 
bellion.  Fear  not  these  giants  of  England — these  great 
men,  and  men  of  power.  Fear  them  not;  but  strike  at 
the  root  of  all  evil,  which  is  covetousness.  ...  I  fully 
certify  you,  extortioners ,  violent  oppressors,  engrossers  of 
tenements  and  lands,  through  whose  covetousnecs 
tenements  decay  and  fall  down,  and  the  king’s 
liege  people,  for  lack  of  sustenance,  are  famished  and 
decayed  ;  they  be  those  which  speak  against  the  honor 
of  the  king.”  And  then  he  launches  out  as  follows : 
“  You  landlords,  you  rent- raisers,  I  may  say,  you  step- 
lords,  you  unnatural  lords,  you  have  for  your  possessions 
yearly  too  much.  Well,  well,  this  one  thing  I  will  say 
unto  you — from  whence  it  cometh,  I  know,  even  from  the 


*  Itemains  of  Ed.,  ibid. ,  pp.  101-2. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


189 


devil.”  “  Surveyors  there  be  that  greedily  gorge  up 
their  covetous  goods  ;  they  make  up  their  mouths,  and 
the  commons  be  utterly  done  by  them  ;  whose  bitter  cry 
ascendeth  up  to  the  ears  of  the  God  of  Sabaotli.  The 
greedy  pit  of  the  hell-burning  fire,  without  great  repent¬ 
ance,  doth  tarry  and  look  for  them.  A  redress  God 
grant :  for  surely,  surely,  but  that  two  things  do  comfort 
me,  I  should  despair  of  redress  in  these  matters.  One  is 
that  the  king’s  majesty,  when  he  cometli  of  age,  will  see 
a  redress  of  these  things  so  out  of  frame  ;  giving  example 
by  letting  down  his  own  lands  first,  and  then  enjoin  his 
subjects  to  follow  him.  The  second  hope  I  have,  is,  I 
believe  the  general  accounting  day  is  at  hand — the  dread¬ 
ful  Day  of  Judgment,  I  mean — which  shall  make  an  end 
of  all  these  calamities  and  miseries  ;  a  dreadful,  horrible 
day  for  them  that  decline  from  God,  to  whom,  as  it  is 
written  in  the  twenty-fifth  Matthew,  is  said, £  Go,  ye  cursed, 
into  everlasting  punishment,  where  there  shall  be  wailing 
and  gnashing  of  teeth.’  ”*  I  have  no  doubt  but  such  of 
“  rent-raisers,”  &c.,  of  his  time  as  heard  or  read  the 
words  of  the  zealous  and  enthusiastic  royal  preacher, 
secretly  laughed  at  his  second  “  hope,”  and  troubled 
themselves  but  little  about  his  warnings  of  “  the  coming- 
anger.”  Equally  certain  am  I  of  the  ridicule  that  would 
pursue  the  divine  or  other  moralist  who  would  attempt 
to  move  the  hearts  of  our  modern  “  step-lords”  by  any 
reference  to  the  life  to  come.  And  so  all  Latimer’s 
denunciations  went  for  nought. 

Similarly  did  Lever  denounce,  before  the  young  king, 
the  “  taking  of  fines  and  heightening  of  rents.”+  And 
Bernard  Gilpin,  also,  in  a  sermon  in  presence  of  his 
majesty,  in  1553,  complained  that — “  Now,  the  robberies, 
extortions,  and  open  oppressions  of  covetous  cormorants, 


*  Strype,  ib.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  133-5. 


f  Ibid.,  p.  410. 


190 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


« 

have  no  end,  nor  limits,  nor  banks  to  keep  in  their  vile¬ 
ness.  As  for  turning  'poor  men  out  of  their  holds ,  they  take 
it  for  no  offence ;  hut  say  the  land  is  their  own  ;  and  so 
they  turn  them  out  of  their  shrouds  like  mice.  .  :  .  0  Lord  ! 
what  a  number  of  such  oppressors  worse  than  Ahab,  are 
in  England,  which  sell  the  poor  for  a  pair  of  shoes.*  Of 
whom,  if  God  should  serve  but  three  or  four  as  he  did 
Ahab,  to  make  the  dogs  lap  the  blood  of  them,  their 
wives,  and  posterity,  I  think  it  would  cause  a  great 
number  to  beware  of  extortion,  and  yet,  escaping  tem¬ 
poral  punishments,  they  are  sure,  by  God’s  word,  their 
blood  is  reserved  for  hell-hounds.  England  hath,  of  late, 
some  terrible  examples  of  God’s  wrath,  in  sudden  and 
strange  deaths,  of  such  as  join  field  to  field,  and  house 
to  house.  Great  pity  they  were  not  chronicled  to  the 
terror  of  others.”t  Thus,  honest  Bernard  Gilpin  brands 
as  “  robberies”  these  “  extortions  and  open  oppressions,” 
practised  by  the  “  covetous  cormorants”  of  his  day  ;  nor 
do  I  find  that  he  or  his  publisher  were  dragged  into  court 
for  the  phrases.  He  also  reminds  them  of  the  tragic 
end  of  the  tyrant  Ahab,  without  being  accused  of  suggest¬ 
ing  murder ;  while  the  use  of  the  same  terms,  and  similar 
illustrations,  on  my  part,  has  entailed  upon  their  manly 
publisher;];  the  expense  of  a  protracted  litigation,  and  on 
me  the  imputations  of  excess  in  speech,  and  the  sugges¬ 
tion  of  extreme  personal  violence  towards  the  tyrants. 
To  all  appearance  the  advocate  of  the  poor  had  more 
liberty  of  speech  three  hundred  years  ago  than  to-day — • 
under  Edward  YI.  than  under  Victoria  I.  After  the  sup¬ 
pression  of  the  Cornwall  insurrection,  in  .1548,  we  are 
informed,  “  that  these  insurrections  might  be  prevented 
in  future,  occasioned  in  a  great  measure  by  the  poverty 
and  discontent  that  reigned  in  the  country,  by  reason  of 

*  Amos ,  ii.  t  Strype,  ibid.,  pp.  135,  &c. 

X  Major  Knox  of  the  Irish  Times. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


191 


I 

the  decay  of  tillage  and  the  enclosing  of  land  for  pasturage? 
“  A  commission  was  granted  to  inquire  into  these  abuses, 
and  on  the  1st  June  there  went  out  a  notable  proclamation 
against  enclosures,  letting  houses  fall  to  decay,  and  un¬ 
lawful  converting  of  arable  land  into  pastures.”  In  this 
proclamation  the  king  and  council  are  represented  as 
“  advertised,”  “  as  well  by  divers  supplications  and  pitiful 
complaints  of  the  king’s  poor  subjects,  as  also  by  other 
wise  and  discreet  men,  having  care  of  the  good  order  of 
the  realm,  that  of  late,  by  the  enclosing  of  lands  and 
arable  grounds  in  divers  and  sundry  places  of  the  realm, 
many  had  been  driven  to  extreme  poverty,  and  compelled 
to  leave  the  places  toliere  they  were  born,  and  seek  their  beings 
in  other  countries  with  great  misery  and  poverty,  insomuch, 
as  in  past  times,  where  ten,  twenty,  yea,  in  some  places, 
one  hundred  or  two  hundred  Christian  people  have  been 
inhabiting  .  .  .  now  there  is  nothing  but  sheep  and  bullocks  ; 
all  that  land  was  tilled  and  occupied  by  so  many  men  .  .  . 
is  now  gotten,  by  insatiable  greediness  of  men,  into  one 
or  two  men’s  hands,  and  scarcely  upon  by  one  poor  shep¬ 
herd,  so  that  the  realm  is  thereby  brought  into  marvel¬ 
lous  desolation,  houses  decayed,  parishes  diminished,  the 
force  of  the  realm  weakened,  and  Christian  people,  by  the 
greedy  covetousness  of  some  men,  eaten  and  devoured  of 
brute  beasts,  and  driven  from  their  houses  by  sheep  and 
bullocks.”*  The  proclamation  proceeds  in  this  strain, 
every  word  of  which  might  be  taken  to  apply  to  Ireland 
every  year  these  twenty-two  years  ;  but  still  no  proclama¬ 
tion  to  prevent “  depopulation,”  and  the  “  bringing  arable 
ground  into  pasture”  with  us.  On  the  contrary,  the  in¬ 
human,  and  no  less  inhuman  than  impolitic,  process  of 
“  clearing”  Ireland  has  been  conducted  with  the  full 
sanction  of  statute  law,  by  its  operation,  and  with  the 


*  Strype,  ibid.,  p.  350. 


103 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


approving  patronage  of  our  chief  men  in  power..  When 
a  lord  lieutenant  publicly  boasts,  at  a  sheep  and  bullock 
show,  that  Ireland  is  destined  to  be  (only)  the  fruitful 
mother  of  flocks  and  herds,  what  more  does  he  mean  but 
that  “  Christian  people”  (though  mere  Papists)  should  be 
“  eaten  and  devoured  of  brute  beasts,  and  driven  from 
their  houses  by  sheep  and  bullocks  ?” 

.  In  pursuance  of  the  instructions  conveyed  in  the  com¬ 
mission  accompanying  the  above  proclamation,  John 
Hales,  one  of  the  commissioners,  after  deploring  “  the 
wonderful  diminution  of  the  king’s  subjects,  as  those 
can  well  declare  that  confer  the  new  books  of  musters 
with  the  old  or  with  the  chroniclers,”  and  “  that  there 
should  be  so  little  charity  among  men,”  and  “  that  one 
Englishman  (Irishman  now)  should  be  set  to  destroy  his 
countrymen,”  denounces  the  “  unsatiably  greedy”  con¬ 
solidators  in  the  words  of  the  prophet :  “  Wo  be  unto 
you  that  cannot  be  contented  that  other  men  should  live 
with  you,  but  'put  mm  from  their  livings,  join  house  to 
house  and  field  to  field.  What  do  you  mean  ?  Think 
ye  to  live  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth?  Ho,  no,  the 
people  be  mine,  I  have  a  care  and  respect  for  them ;  I 
will  not  suffer  them  to  be  devoured  at  your  hands.  .  .  . 
I  am  their  defender ;  I  am  their  ayder ;  and  I  will  not 
suffer  them  to  perish.”* 

Still,  and  ever  in  vain.  “  Insatiable  covetousness  ” 
proved  too  stubborn  to  bend  before  royal  proclamations 
and  commissions,  or  the  prophetic  warnings  of  charity. 
Proclamation  succeeded  proclamation,  sermon  followed 
sermon,  the  press  sent  out  book  after  book,  yet  “  the 
insatiable  greed  of  men”  prevailed.  “We  are  com¬ 
manded,”  says  one  of  the  contemporary  authors,  “  to  love 
God  above  all  things,  and  our  neighbours  as  ourselves, 

*  Strype,  ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


193 


while  we  put  them  out  of  their  houses,  and  lay  their 

goods  in  the  street . Who,  in  these  days,  are  such 

oppressors,  such  graziers  (turning  arable  land  to  pasture), 
such  shepherds  (keeping  sheep  instead  of  ploughing,  for 
setting  poor  men  on  work),  such  enhancers  of  rents,  such 
takers  of  incomes,  as  are  those  which  profess  the  gospel. 
Would  to  God  that,  in  these  days,  men  would  he  as  careful 
for  their  poor  brethren  as  they  are  for  their  dogs.”* 
Yes,  while  they  were  burning  the  Pope  in  effigy,  for  God 
and  gospel’s  sake,  they  were  starving  their  brethren  to 
death,  and  at  the  same  time  pampering  their  dogs — for 
the  sake  of  self. 

Another  author  of  the  day,  Kobert  Crowley,  pub¬ 
lished  “  An  information  and  petition  against  the  op¬ 
pressors  of  the  poor  commons  of  this  realm.”  “  A  man 
of  letters,”  says  Strype,  “  and  bred  up  in  Oxford,  an 
earnest  professor  of  religion,  and  who,  a  year  or  two 
after  this,  received  orders  from  Bishop  Bidley.”t  He 
sets  out  with  a  profound  maxim,  which  forms  the  key¬ 
stone  of  the  entire  structure  of  landed  possession,  that 
the  “  possessioners”  are  not  the  lords  or  owners,  but  the 
stewards  of  the  soil.  “If  the  possessioners,”  says  he, 
“  would  consider  themselves  to  be  but  stuardes  and  not 
lordes  over  their  possessions,  this  oppression  would  be  soon 
redressed ;  but  so  long  as  this  persuasion  taketh  in  their 
minds — ‘  It  is  mine  owne;  who  shall  warne  me  to  do  with 
myne  owne  as  meselfe  lysteth  f — it  shall  not  be  possible 
to  have  any  redress  at  all.”  Words  of  profound  wisdom, 
and  prophetic  of  the  language  and  only  argument 
employed  by  the  Irish  “  oppressors”  of  this  very  day. 
So  far,  indeed,  do  our  modern  scourges  carry  their 
notions  of  altum  dominium  over  their  “property,”  that 
they — many  of  them — deny  the  competency  even  of  the 


*  Strype,  ii.,  226. 


t  lb.  ii.,  217. 
N 


194 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


legislature,  so  much  as  to  prescribe  rules  for  its  manage¬ 
ment.  Eights  alone  they  claim,  duty  they  ignore. 

But  good  Robert  Crowley,  the  Protestant  Levite,  pro¬ 
ceeds  just  in  the  same  strain  and  the  same  line  of  argu¬ 
ment  adopted  fifty  years  before  him  by  John  Rous,  the 
good  old  monk  of  Warwick  : — 

“For  if  I  may  do  with  myne  owne  as  me  lysteth,  then 
may  I  suffer  my  brother,  his  wife  and  his  children,  to 
lye  in  the  strete,  except  he  will  give  me  more  rent  for  myne 
house  than  ever  he  shall  he  able  to  pay ;  then  may  I  take 
his  goods  for  that  he  oweth  me,  and  keep  his  body  in 
prison,  turning  out  his  wife  and  children  to  perishe,  if 
God  will  not  move  some  man’s  harte  to  pittie  them,  and 
yet  keep  my  coffers  full  of  gold  and  silver.  If  there  were 
no  God,  then  would  1  think  it  lawful  for  men  to  use  their 
possessions  as  they  lyste ;  or  if  God  woidd  not  require  an 
account  of  us  for  the  bestowing  of  them,  I  would  not  greatly 
gainsay  if  they  took  their  pleasure  of  them  whylse  they 
live  here.  But,  forasmuch  as  we  have  God,  and  He  hath 
declared  unto  us  by  the  Scriptures  that  he  hath  made  the 
possessioners  but  stuardes  of  his  ryches,  and  that  he  will 
holde  streight  accompt  with  them  for  the  occupying  and 
bestowing  of  them,  I  think  that  no  Christian  ears  can 

abide  to  hear  that  more  than  Turkish  opinion . 

Behold,  you  engrossers  of  fermes  and  tenements,  the 
terrible  threatenings  of  God,  whose  wrath  you  cannot 
escape.”  How  the  engrossers  must  have  laughed  at  his 
pious  Christian  warnings  !  But  he  proceeds  :  “  The  voice 
of  the  poor  (whom  you  have,  with  money,  thrust  out  of 
house  and  home)  is  well  accepted  in  the  ear  of  the  Lord, 

and  hath  stirred  up  his  wrath  against  you . And 

doubt  not  ye,  you  lease-mongers,  that  take  grouncles  by 
lease  to  the  extente,  to  let  them  again  for  double  and  tripple  the 
rente,  your  part  is  in  this  plage.  For  when  you  have  mul¬ 
tiplied  your  rentes  to  the  highest,  so  that  ye  have  made  all 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


195 


your  tenants  'poor  slaves,  to  labour  and  toyle,  and  bring  to 
you  all  that  may  be  plowen  and  digged  out  of  your  groundes , 
then  shall  death  suddenly  strike  you ;  then  shall  your 
conscience  pricke  you ;  then  shall  you  think,  with  des¬ 
perate  Cain,  that  your  sin  is  greater  than  that  it  may  be 
forgiven.  For  your  own  conscience  shall  judge  you 
worthy  no  mercy,  because  you  have  showed  no  mercy.”* 

Here  I  must  say  the  Christian,  conscientious  author 
seems  to  have  labored  under  a  very  erroneous  impres¬ 
sion,  and  to  have  assumed,  without  grounds,  that  these 
monsters  were  capable  of  feeling  any  the  smallest 
twitches  of  conscience.  Father,  like  Pharaoh,  their  heart 
was  hardened,  and  their  eyes  blindfolded  to  the  last,  in 
very  punishment  of  their  unchristian  obduracy  in  the 
paths  of  oppression.  Talk,  indeed,  of  a  conscience  in  an 
Irish  exterminator,  or  an  Irish  land-jobbing  company  of 
the  present  day  ! ! 

We  may,  however,  peruse  him  a  little  longer  :  “  The 
same  measure  that  you  have  made  to  others,  shall  now 
be  made  to  you.  You  have  showed  no  mercy — how  can 
you  then  look  for  mercy  1  ...  God  hath  not  sette  you 
to  survey  his  lands,  but  to  play  the  stuardes  in  his  house¬ 
hold  of  this  world,  and  to  see  that  your  poor  fellow- 
servants  lack  not  their  necessaries.  .  .  And  if  any  of  them 
perish  thorowe  your  default,  knowe,  then,  for  certeintye, 
that  the  bloud  of  them  shall  be  required  at  your  hands. 
If  the  impotent  creatures  perish  for  lack  of  necessaries ,  you 
ARE  THE  MURDERERS ;  for  you  have  their  inheritance,  and 
do  not  minister  unto  them.”  A  good  many  years  ago,  I, 
too,  before  I  ever  read  this  passage,  arraigned  the  exter¬ 
minators  and  consolidators  of  Ireland  as  “  murderers.” 

“  If  the  sturdy  fall  to  stealing,  robbing,  and  revering, 
then  you  are  the  causers  thereof  ;  for  you  dig  in,  inclose, 
and  withhold  from  them  the  earth ,  out  of  which  they  should 

*  Strype,  ibid. 


196 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


dig  and  plough  their  living.  For,  as  the  Psalmist  says, 

‘  All  the  heaven  is  the  Lord’s,  but  as  for  the  earth,  he 
hath  given  it  to  the  children  of  men.’  .  .  .  What  a  sea  of 
mischifes  hath  flowed  out  of  this  more  than  Turkish 
tyrannie  !”  And  he  concludes  :  “  If  you  let  those  things 
pass  and  regarde  them  not,  be  ye  sure  the  Lord  shall  con¬ 
found  your  wisdome.  Invent,  decree,  establish,  and 
authorize  what  you  can,  all  shall  come  to  nought.  The 
ways  that  you  shall  invent  to  establish  unitie  and  concord 
shall  be  the  occasions  of  discord.  The  things  whereby 
you  shall  think  to  win  praise  through  all  the  world  shall 
tourne  to  your  utter  shame,  and  the  ways  you  shall  in¬ 
vent  to  establish  a  kingdom  shall  be  the  utter  subversion 
of  the  same.”  * 

This,  no  doubt,  is  quaint  language  enough,  but  it  is 
the  language  of  nature.  “  If  there  were  no  God  ”  ! ! 
“  If  ”  ! ! !  indeed.  Then  might  mankind  “  eat  and  drink 
to  day,  for  to-morrow  they  were  not.”  And  yet  do  our 
Irish  landlords — many  of  them — all  Christians,  many  of 
my  own  creed — act  the  landlord,  as  “  if  there  were  no 
God,”  “oppressing  the  poor  man,  and  the  weak  of  heart, 
to  put  him  to  death.”  t 

Preachers,  pamphleteers,  legislators,  spoke,  wrote,  and 
made  laws  in  vain.  The  ciuri  sacri  fames  still  prevailed. 
Enclosures  continued  the  order  of  the  day,  and,  as  a  natural 
consequence,  the  evicted  tenantry  rose  en  masse  through¬ 
out  the  country,  but  only,  as  now-a-days  in  Ireland,  to 
be  put  down  “  by  the  strong  arm  of  the  law.”  The 
“risings”  in  Cornwall,  Norfolk,  and  Devon,  cost  the 
government  £27,330  7s.  9d.,  with  a  frightful  slaughter 
of  the  outraged  people.  Then,  though  not  so  bad  as 
now,  government  began  to  unravel  the  web  at  the  wrong 
end.  Had  it,  instead  of  hecatombing  the  victims  of 


*  Strype,  ibid. 


7  Ps.  cviii. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


197 


oppression,  simply  decimated  the  oppressors  themselves, 
all  this  cost  of  blood  and  treasure  had  been  spared. 
But,  then  as  now,  governments,  for  the  most  part,  were 
conducted  not  on  the  principle  of  “justice  to  all,”  but 
favor  to  few. 

The  Orange,  aye,  and  Whiggish  yell  raised  this  day 
against  Fenians,  was  then  got  up  by  the  land  monopolists 
against  their  victims ;  and  the  Protector  Somerset  was 
arraigned  almost  as  a  traitor  to  his  country,  for  not  pro¬ 
claiming  martial  law,  and  issuing  special  commissions 
of  oyer  and  terminer  against  the  “  wicked  and  foolish 
insurgents.”  Arbitrary  as  he  was,  he  had  still  the  heart 
of  an  Englishman,  and,  though  still  with  great  bloodshed, 
he  quelled  the  “  insurrections”  without  infringing  on  the 
constitutions  of  the  realm.* 

Not  so  now  in  Ireland.  Let  a  symptom  of  active 
opposition  to  the  most  galling  oppression  but  appear, 
and,  forthwith,  not  alone  are  all  the  infamous  “  arms 
acts,”  “peace  preservation  acts,”  “  coercion  acts,”  &c.,  &c., 
put  into  active  execution ;  but  the  very  key-stone  of  the 
constitutional  arch  is  torn  away,  and  personal  liberty — 
that  dearest  treasure  of  man — is  left  to  the  mercy  of 
soulless,  unscrupulous  underlings,  catering  to  the  ambi¬ 
tion  and  prejudices  of  their  not  less  infamous  superiors 
in  office.f 

In  this  very  parish,  a  few  days  ago,  the  house  of  a 
feeble  widow  was  searched  for  arms  by  the  sub-inspector 
of  constabulary,  with  a  posse  of  his  police.  They  found 
there  a  gun — left  in  the  house  for  security,  two  days 
before,  by  the  owner,  who  was  duly  licensed  to  keep  and 

*  During  one  of  the  previous  risings,  the  insurgents,  in  the 
midland  and  northern  counties,  carried  a  banner  on  which  was 
painted  a  plough,  with  the  inscription :  “  God  speed  the  plough,” 
which  circumstance  is  the  origin  of  the  familiar  phrase. 

t  See  Mr.  Butt’s  letter  in  Appendix. 


198 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


carry  it ;  and  this  very  day,  as  I  write,  the  widow’s  son, 
Martin  Gibbons,  is  undergoing  the  ordeal  of  a  petty 
sessions’  trial  in  Ballinrobe,  brow-beaten  by  police,  for 
the  temporary  location  of  a  rusty  old  gun  in  his  old 
widow  mother’s  house. 

And,  in  Ireland,  we  are  branded  as  “  traitors  ”  if  we, 
as  men,  rebel  against  such  a  degrading  system. 

As  has  been  frequently  remarked,  the  clepopulators  of 
Edward’s  reign  were  too  powerful  for  both  gospel  and 
king.  As  every  attempt  at  legislation  now-a-days,  in 
favor  or  protection  of  the  Irish  tenant,  is  sure  to  fail  in  a 
landlord  legislature,  so  then  the  several  bills,  introduced 
by  Hales,  were  equally  unsuccessful,  through  the  influence 
of  the  powerful  clepopulators.  The  5th  and  6th  Edward 
VI.,  c.  5,  was  the  only  statute  passed,  providing  that,  in 
each  parish,  the  same  extent  of  land  should  be  kept  under 
tillage  as  had  been  since  the  first  year  of  Henry  VIII. — 
the  penalty  being  5s.  an  acre  yearly  for  its  non- 
observance.  Yet,  neither  was  the  land  tilled,  nor  the 
fine  enforced,  and  hence  all  the  disorder  and  insurrec¬ 
tions  that  sprung  up  during  that  and  the  following 
reigns. 

Mendicancy  and  vagabondism  became  the  order  of  the 
day;  and,  as  the  king  and  parliament  used  their  best 
efforts  to  arrest  the  arm  of  the  depopulator,  so  did  they 
interpose  with  the  most  stringent  and  barbarous  penal¬ 
ties  against  the  wretches  whose  alternative  lay  between 
vagrancy  and  death.  Lingard  thus  pithily  describes 
the  fate  of  the  convicted  mendicant :  “  Whosoever  lived 
idly  and  loiteringly  for  the  space  of  three  days  came 
under  the  description  of  a  vagabond.  Two  justices  of  the 
peace  might  order  the  letter  V  to  be  burned  on  his  breast, 
and  adjudge  him  to  serve  the  informer  two  years  as  his 
slave.  His  master  was  bound  to  provide  him  with 
bread,  water,  and  refuse  meat ;  might  fix  an  iron  ring 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


199 


round  his  neck,  arm,  or  leg;  and  was  authorized  to  com¬ 
pel  him  to  labor  at  any  work,  however  vile  it  might  be, 
by  beating,  chaining,  or  otherwise.  If  the  slave  absented 
himself  a  fortnight,  the  letter  S  S  was  burned  on  his 
cheek  or  forehead,  and  he  became  a  slave  for  life;  and  if 
he  offended  a  second  time  in  like  manner,  his  flight 
subjected  him  to  the  penalties  of  felony.  Two  years  later 
this  severe  statute  was  repealed.”* 

Nearly  fifty  years  later,  the  “sturdy  beggars”  and 
“  vagabonds,”  created  by  depopulation,  were,  by  express 
orders  of  Elizabeth,  executed  by  martial'  law.  Had  a 
few  of  their  “  oppressors”  been  so  dealt  with,  or  even 
“  whipped  ”  or  “  branded”  for  every  act  of  depopulation, 
most  likely  the  evil  had  never  reached  the  dimensions  it 
possessed  at  the  close  of  her  reign. 

To  proceed  in  the  order  of  time  : — In  the  reign  of 
Mary  another  commission  issued — “for  the  better  habita- 
cion,  restoring,  and  re-edifying  of  the  castelles,  fortresses, 
and  fortelettes,  villages,  and  houses  that  bee  decayed 
within  the  counties  of  Northumberlande,  Cumberlande, 
Westmorelande,  and  the  bishopricke  of  Durham,  for  the 
better  manuring  and  employing  the  groundes  within  the 
same,  and  for  the  more  increase  of  tillage.”!*  The  power 
conferred  by  this  parliamentary  commission  was  almost 
unlimited — the  extent  of  territory  alone  bounding  the 
operations  of  the  commissioners ;  but  another  act  ex¬ 
tended  the  power  to  the  entire  kingdom,  confirming, 
as  it  did,  the  4th  Henry  VII.,  c.  19,  already  referred  to, 
and  embracing  all  houses  decayed  or  “  to  bee  decayed  ” 
having  “  twenty  acres  or  more  to  them  lying  or  belong¬ 
ing,”  previously  tilled  or  not ;  and  authorizing  the 
appointment  of  commissioners  to  investigate  all  violations 

*  “Hist,  of  Eng.,”  v.  5,  p.  127  (Dolman,  1855),  in  which 
statutes  are  quoted. 

t  2nd  and  3rd  Phil,  and  Mary,  c.  1 . 


200 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


of  the  said  act  of  Henry  VII.,  with  7th  Henry  VIII.,  c.  1  ; 
and  to  inquire  “  of  all  grounde  in  or  neere  any  corne 
fielde  newly  converted  to  the  keeping  of  conies  not  being 
lawful  warren.”  The  commissioners  had  full  power  to 
punish  delinquents  in  “  any  of  the  aforesaid  decais  or  de¬ 
faults,  and  their  being  and  continuing  owner,  ...  in  such 
sommes  of  money  as  to  suche  commissioners  shall  seem 
reasonable,  for  the  re-edifying  of  suche  decayed  houses, 
and  for  the  converting  of  suche  grounde  so  converted 
from  tillage  to  pasture  into  tillage  again,  and  for  the  di¬ 
minishing  and  destroying  of  conies,  within  suche  con¬ 
venient  times,  and  in  suche  maner  and  fourme  as  to  the 
same  commissioners  shall  seem  mete.”*  Provision  was 
also  made  for  the  case  in  which  the  original  defaulters 
had  left,  and  the  actual  occupiers,  and  “  all  and  every 
person  having  any  particular  estate  in  the  lands  for  term 
of  life,  years,”  were  to  be  taxed  for  cost  of  rebuilding, 
the  former  being  bound  to  “  turne  the  land  employed  to 
the  keeping  of  conies  (or  converted  into  pasture),  again 
into  tillage,  or  to  destroy  or  diminish  the  same  conies, 
within  such  time,  and  upon  such  paynes,  as  by  them  shall 
be  limited  and  appointed.”  They  were  also  empowered  to 
reduce  the  rents  increased  by  the  conversion  of  the  land 
from  tillage  to  pasture.  “If  the  grounds  to  be  re-converted 
into  tillage  should  be  chargeable  with  any  rent  reserved 
since  the  time  the  said  ground  was  converted  from  till¬ 
age  to  pasture,  and  which  was  reserved  and  made  greater, 
in  consideration  that  the  same  was  so  converted  horn 
tillage  into  pasture  or  stored  with  conies,”  the  com¬ 
missioners  might  reduce  “all  suche  rents,  if  they  be  greater 
than  the  ground  turned  into  tillage,  or  by  reason  of  the 
destruction  of  the  conies,  .  .  any  writing,  agreement,  or 
promise  whatsoever  to  the  contrary,  notwithstanding.”! 


*  2nd  and  3rd  Phil,  and  Mary,  c.  1. 


f  Sec.  12. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


201 


This  was  no  small  interference  with  the  “  rights  of 
property” — a  tax  on  pasture,  a  premium  for  tillage  as  in 
Persia  of  old,  and  a  forced  reduction  of  rent !  But, 
more  sweeping  still,  the  commissioners  were  empowered 
“  to  demise  and  let  said  house  and  landes  (ten  or  twenty 
acres,  not  let  to  farm  within  two  years),  to  any  person  or 
persons  having  no  other  farm  or  tenements  within  the 
same  parishe,  nor  having  any  accion  or  suit  at  that  pre¬ 
sent  against  the  owner,  and  requiring  the  same  for  seven 
years  at  the  most,  for  such  reasonable  rent,  and  upon  such 
reasonable  covenantes,  as  the  said  commissioners  shall 
think  mete  for  both  parties.”*  The  provisions  of  5th 
and  6th  Edward  VI.,  c.  5,  were  also  repeated,  imposing 
a  fine  of  5s.  for  every  acre  of  land  converted  from  tillage 
to  pasture. 

I  can  do  no  better  than  quote  the  following  verbatim 
from  the  Dublin  Review  on  this  subject : — 

“  Severe  as  this  statute  would  now  appear,  it  and  the  5th 
and  6th  Edward  VI.,  c.  5,  were  repealed  by  the  5th  Eliz.,  c. 
2,  as  ‘  being  in  some  partes  thereof  imperfect,  and  in  some 
places  too  milde  and  gentle,  and  thereby  not  having 
brought,  to  the  decayed  state  of  tillage  and  houses  of 
husbandry,  that  long-looked-for  remedye  which  was  then 
hoped  for.’ 

“  This  statute  confirmed  for  ever  the  4th  Henry  VII.,  c. 
19;  7th  Hen. VIII., c.  1;  27th  Hen.  VIII., c.  22;  and  27th 
Hen.VIII.,c.28,  sec.  17  and  18;  and  provided  that  all  lands 
tilled  for  four  years  successively,  at  anytime  since  the  20th 
Hen.  VIII.,  should  be  kept  in  tillage  under  a  penalty  of  10s. 
tin  acre,  to  be  recovered  by  the  next  heir,  the  remainder¬ 
man,  the  lord  in  fee,  or  the  crown,  or  in  default  of  these 
successively,  by  any  one  who  should  sue,  &c.,  &c.  :  and 
also,  that  all  lands  converted  into  pasture  between  ann.  7th 

*  2nd  and  3rd  Phil,  and  Mary,  c.  i.,  sec.  14. 


202 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


and  20tli  Hen.  VIII.  should  be  restored  to  tillage  within 
one  year,  and  that  commissioners  should  he  appointed 
from  time  to  time  to  inquire  of  officers,  &c.  By  the  13th 
Eliz.,  c.  25,  this  act  was  made  perpetual ;  hut  hy  the  14th 
Eliz.,  c.  11,  27th  Eliz.,  c.  11,  29th  Eliz.,  c.  25,  31st 
Eliz.,  c.  10,  and  35th  Eliz.,  c.  7,  was  continued  only  to 
che  end  of  the  next  session  of  parliament.  This  seemed 
to  he  productive  of  much  mischief,  for,  in  1597-8,  we 
find  two  acts  passed  on  the  subject.  The  first  (39th 
Eliz.,  c.  1)  enacts  that  one-half  of  the  houses  of  husban¬ 
dry  decayed  for  more  than  seven  years,  and  all  those  de¬ 
cayed  within  seven  years,  should  he  rebuilt,  and  forty  or 
twenty  acres  of  land  laid  to  them,  under  a  yearly  penalty 
of  £10  for  not  rebuilding  the  houses,  and  10s.  an  acre  for 
not  ‘  laying  the  lands  to  them.’  The  second  (39th  Eliz., 
c.  2)  begins  with  the  following  admirable  recital : — 

“ 4  Whereas,  the  strengthe  and  florishinge  estate  of 
this  kingdome  hath  bene  always,  and  is,  greatly  upheld 
and  advanced  by  the  maintenance  of  the  ploughe  and 
tillage,  being  the  occasion  of  the  increase  and  multiplyinge 
of  people,  both  for  service  in  the  wars,  and  in  tymes  of 
peace — being  also  a  principal  meane  that  people  are  sett 
on  worke,  and  thereby  withdrawn  from  ydlenesse, 
drunk enesse,  unlawful  games,  and  all  other  lewd  prac¬ 
tices  and  conditions  of  life ;  and  whereas,  by  the  same 
means  of  tillage  and  husbandrie  the  greater  part  of  the 
subjects  are  preserved  from  extreme  poverty,  in  a  com¬ 
petent  estate  and  maintenance,  and  means  to  live,  and 
the  wealth  of  the  realme  is  kept  dispersed  and  distributed 
in  manie  liandes,  where  yt  is  more  ready  to  answer  all 
necessary  charges  for  the  service  of  the  realme.  And 
whereas,  also,  the  said  husbandrie  and  tillage  is  a  cause 
that  the  realme  doth  more  stand  upon  itselfe,  without 
depen dinge  upon  foraigne  countries,  either  for  bringing  in 
of  corne  in  time  of  scarcitie,  or  vent  and  utterance  of 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


203 


our  commodities,  beinge  in  over  great  abundance ;  and 
whereas  ’  (since  the  discontinuance  of  the  husbandry  acts 
in  the  35  th  year  of  her  reign)  ‘  there  have  growne  many 
more  depopulations,  by  turning  tillage  into  pasture,  than 
at  any  time  for  the  like  number  of  years  heretofore,’  the 
penalty  of  turning  tillage  land  into  pasture  is  raised  from 
10s.  to  20s.  per  acre,  recoverable  at  once  by  whosoever 
should  sue  for  it.  By  another  act  of  the  same  session,  the 
5th  Eliz.,  c.  2,  was  made  perpetual.”* 

Stringent  as  were  these  measures,  they  seem  to  have 
borne  little  or  no  fruit  in  their  execution.  The  wealth 
of  the  depopulator,  and  the  corruption  of  the  country 
justices,  counteracted  the  benevolent  aims  of  sovereign 
and  parliament,  and,  with  her  crown,  Elizabeth  be¬ 
queathed  a  legacy  of  discontent  to  the  son  of  her  mur¬ 
dered  rival. 

In  1601,  the  first  Poor  Law  Act  had  the  effect  of 
diminishing,  for  a  time,  “  vagabondism,”  and  the  em¬ 
ployment  of  the  hangman.  The  several  husbandry  acts, 
however,  already  referred  to,  were,  with  the  exception 
of  25th  Henry  VIII.,  c.  13,  prescribing  limits  to  number 
of  sheep  in  each  one’s  possession,  repealed  by  the  21st 
Jacob.  I.,  c.  21,  and  this  only  re-opened  the  floodgates  of 
depopulation.  An  author,  calling  himself  B.  P.,  of  Wells, 
published  a  book,  in  1636,  entitled  “  Depopulation 
arraigned,  convicted,  and  condemned  by  the  lawes  of 
God  and  man ;  a  treatise  necessary  in  these  times”  (and 
these  times  of  ours  no  less) ;  in  which  he  thus  epitomises 
the  general  injuries  caused  by  the  system  : — 

“  Hex  patitur,  patifcur  clerus,  respublica,  pauper, 

Et  non  passurus  depopulator  erit.” 

King,  Church,  state,  poor,  all  are  victims ;  and  shall 
not  the  depopulator  himself  suffer  at  all?  “But,”  con- 


*  Dublin  Review ,  vol.  xiii.,  pp.  537-8. 


204 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


tinues  R.  P.,  “  non  passurus  est  depopulator.  You 
have  heard  him  discovered,  described,  arraigned,  and 
convicted,  and,  ere  long,  you  shall  hear  his  sentence. 
His  crime  is  no  less  than  high  treason  against  the  Sacred 
Trinity  of  Heaven,  in  compassing  about,  violating,  and 
cancelling  of  that  great  charter  of  1  terram  dedit  filiis 
hominum  ut  operarentur  ;*  and  he  must  not  think  that 
such  a  grand  transgression  against  God,  the  king,  the 
Church,  the  state,  and  the  poore,  can  be  expiated  by  a 
parlor  sermon  of  a  stipendiary  schoolmaster,  who  must 
sowe  doune  under  his  patron’s  elbowes ;  ulcus  est,  ne  tan- 
gas  ;  he  must  not  touch  this  maladie  for  fear  he  should 
lose  his  salarie.”  The  lord  keeper,  Coventry,  in  issuing 
his  instructions  to  the  judges  of  assize  in  1G35,  takes 
occasion  to  impress  upon  them,  in  a  special  manner,  the 
necessity  of  the  utmost  care  and  rigor  in  investigating 
all  offences  of  this  kind,  as  being  “  a  crime  of  a  crying 
nature,  that  barreth  God  of  his  honor  and  the  king  of 

his  subjects . Depopulation  being  an  oppression 

of  an  high  nature,  and  commonly  done  by  the  greatest 
persons,  that  keep  the  jurors  under  and  in  awe in¬ 
timating  that  “  his  majesty  willeth  that  you  do  not 
cease,  but  inquire  on  still;  for  it  is  his  resolution,  against 
all  opposition,  to  make  all  men  see  he  hath  a  care  of  this 
overspreading  evil,  and  of  the  means  of  his  people,  having 
churches  and  towns  demolished,  and  his  people  eaten  up 
like  bread,  to  satisfy  the  greedy  desires  of  a  few  who  do 
waste  as  profusely  as  they  gather  unconscionably,  and 
bring  unto  their  posterity  that  woe  which  is  pronounced 
against  those  that  ‘lay  house  to  house  and  field  to 
field,  to  dwell  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth.’  ”* 

Accordingly  royal  commissions  issued  next  year  for 
every  shire  in  England,  to  ascertain  “what  and  how 


*  “State  Trials,”  vol.  iii.,  832. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


205 


many  burwaghes,  tounes,  villages,  parishes,  hamlets, 
farmes,  farme-houses,  or  other  messuages  or  houses,  since 
the  tenth  year  of  the  late  Queen  Elizabeth,  have  been 
and  are  now  depopulated,  destroyed,  and  ruinated,  or 
converted  from  the  habitation  of  husbandmen  to  other 
uses ;  and  what  lands  and  tenements  have  been  converted 
from  tillage  and  plowing  to  pasture,”  which  “  lands  con¬ 
verted  from  tillage  to  pasture,  and  other  unlawful  purposes" 
were  to  be  restored  to  tillage,  “  and  to  admit  of  husband¬ 
men  to  be  tenants  of  those  houses  pro  ut  hastenus  furi 
consuetum  est.”* 

Nor  does  this  commission,  or  series  of  commissions, 
seem  to  have  been  without  fruit,  for  the  same  interesting 
author,  “  R.  P.,”  relates  the  following  as  an  instance  of 
the  penalties  which,  even  after  the  repeal  of  the  hus¬ 
bandry  laws,  the  common  law  itself  dealt  out  to  the 
“  vastator  agrorum — 

“  In  Michaelmas  terme,  10th  Car.,  upon  an  information 
exhibited  by  his  majestie’s  attorney-general  against  a 
gentleman  of  note  and  worth,  for  depopulation,  convert¬ 
ing  great  quantities  of  land  into  pasture,  which  formerly 
had  been  arable,  used  to  tillage,  ....  and  suffering 
the  farme-houses  and  their  out-houses  to  bee  ruined 
and  uninhabited,  and  a  water  corn-mill  to  decay  and  go 
to  ruin ;  for  that  it  appeared,  upon  evident  proofe,  that 
there  were  many  servants  and  people  kept  upon  those 
farms  when  they  were  used  to  tillage,  ....  and  for 
that  the  defendant  had  then  of  late  years  taken  into  his 
owne  occupation  all  the  said  farmes,  and  converted  all 
the  lands  formerly  used  for  tillage  into  pasture,  and  had 
also  depopulated  and  pulled  downe  three  of  the  said 
farme-houses,  and  suffered  the  other  two  to  run  to  ruin, 
and  to  lye  uninhabited . Upon  grave  and  deliber- 


*  “Depopulation,”  &c.,  pp.  93,  &c. 


206 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ate  consideration,  the  court  did,  with  a  joynt  consent  and 
opinion,  declare  that  the  defendant  was  clearly  guilty  of 
said  depopulation  and  conversion  of  arable  land  into 
pasture,  before  expressed,  and  that  the  same  offences  were 
punishable  by  the  common  law  of  this  kingdom ,  and  fit  to  be 
severely  punished,  the  rather,  for  that  it  was  a  growing 
evil ;  .  .  .  .  therefore  their  lordships  did  think  fit  to 
order,  adjudge,  and  decree”  that  the  transgressor  should 
be  committed  to  the  Fleet,  pay  a  fine  of  £4000  to  the 
crown,  acknowledge  his  offence  in  open  court  at  the  next 
county  assizes,  pay  £100  to  the  informant,  the  same  to 
the  parish  minister,  £300  to  the  parish  poor,  with  all  the 
costs  of  suit,  besides  repairing  the  houses,  out-houses, 
and  mill,  within  the  space  of  two  years,  “  fit  for  habita¬ 
tion  and  use,  as  they  were  before,”  and  restore  the  farms 
to  the  farm-houses  again,  “  and  let  and  demise  the  same 
severall  farmes  to  severall  tenants  for  reasonable  rents, 
such  as  the  country  would  afford  ;”  “  and  that  all  the  said 
lands  should  be  again  ploughed  up  and  used  to  tillage  as 
formerly  it  had  been.”* 

This  was  grappling  with  the  evil  in  real  earnest.  Had 
some  similar  examples  been  made  of  Irish  depopulators, 
these  forty  years  past,  how  different  wmuld  be  the  aspect 
of  the  country  to-day  ! — how  different  the  spirit  of  the 
Irish  race,  dispersed  and  at  home  !  It  is  now  a  seething 
cauldron  of  hate  and  disaffection.  Had  the  hand  of  the 
exterminating  angel  been  arrested  at  the  outset,  that 
same  spirit  might  be  one  of  hearty  devotion  to  imperial 
sway  and  fortunes. 

Is  it  now  late?  or  has  the  curse  of  the  reprobate  come 
upon  the  hardened  devastator  ? 

If  Lucan,  and  Sligo,  and  Palmer,  and  Pollock  were 
dealt  with  “  by  her  majesty’s  attorney-general,”  as  the 


*  “  Depopulation,”  p.  840. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


207 


“  gentleman  of  note”  was  by  the  chief  law  officer  of 
Charles,  what  a  different  spirit  would  reign  among  our 
maddened  people  this  day.  But  no  :  quite  the  reverse. 
Her  majesty’s  attorney-general  is  more  congenially 
employed,  in  striving  to  find  twelve  men  in  some  part 
of  Ireland,  outside  Galway,  to  convict  an  agrarian 
“  suspect  ”  of  having  attempted  the  life  of  another 
“  great  gentleman,”  who  “  did  as  he  liked  with  his 
own.”  Up  to  this,  itself,  not  a  breath  of  censure  from 
attorney-general,  or  any  other  official  of  the  crown,  on  the 
“  vastator  agrorum,”  on  that  “  oppression  of  a  high  na¬ 
ture,  and  commonly  done  by  the  highest  persons,”  de¬ 
population  in  Ireland ;  while  even  the  suspicion  of  having 
resented  the  “  oppression  of  a  very  high  nature,”  entails 
on  the  unhappy,  humble  suspect,  such  an  ordeal  as  Peter 
Barrett  is  passing  through,  just  now,  at  the  hands  of  the 
attorney-general,  and  as  the  “  suspects”  for  the  Hunter 
tragedy  have  had  to  endure,  of  late,  for  several  weeks. 
In  one  word,  “  crown”  and  “  law,”  legislature  and  execu¬ 
tive,  have  hitherto  acted  the  scandalous  partisan  with  the 
44  great  gentleman,”  as  against  the  wretched,  trembling 
tillers  of  the  soil.  For  all  the  heartburnings  and  conse¬ 
quent  “  outrages”  on  the  one  side,  and  all  the  impelling 
causes  on  the  other,  the  government  of  the  country  alone 
is  responsible.  Will  the  present  administration  act  up  to 
its  professions,  and  by  one  decisive  stroke,  not,  indeed, 
make  atonement  for  the  past — for  this  the  fee-simple  of 
Ireland  would  not  effect — but  make  a  recurrence  of  its 
dismal  agrarian  history  in  this  unhappy  country  for  ever 
impossible  ?  Time  will  soon  tell. 


208 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

JUDEA. — PERSIA. — CHINA. — GREECE. 


“  And  Juda  and  Israel  dwelt  without  any  fear,  every  one  under  his  vine  and 
under  his  fig  tree,  from  Dan  to  Bersabee,  all  the  days  of  Solomon. 

“  And  Solomon  had  forty  thousand  stalls  of  chariot  horses,  and  twelve  thousand 
*or  the  saddle.”— III.  Kings ,  vi.,  25-26. 


The  above  must  furnish  us  with  an  idea  of,  at  once, 
the  immense  wealth  and  population  and  security  of 
tenure  in  the  old  land  of  Judea,  previous  to  the  schism  of 
Israel.  Indeed,  we  are  positively  informed  that  “  Juda 
and  Israel  were  innumerable  as  the  sands  of  the  sea  in 
multitude,  eating  and  drinking,  and  rejoicing.”*  While  the 
description  of  his  menage ,  being  “the  provision  of  Solo¬ 
mon  for  each  day,  .  .  .  thirty  measures  of  flour,  and  three 
score  measures  of  meal,  ten  fat  oxen,  and  twenty  out  of 
the  pasture,  and  a  hundred  rams,  besides  venison  and 
harts,  roes  and  fatted  cows,”t  can  only  further  enhance 
our  estimate  at  once  of  the  population  and  prosperity  of 
the  country  in  that  distant  day.  For  eighteen  hundred 
years  that  teeming  country  has  been  a  wilderness. 

“The  area  of  Judea,”  says  Sadlier,  “reduced  into  English 
acres  and  divided  by  the  number  of  inhabitants,  all  of 
whom  were  agricultural,  will  fully  prove  the  early  practice 
and  the  wonderful  effects  of  minute  cultivation.  If  this 
appeal  be  disallowed,  the  same  facts  relative  to  the  prin- 


*  Vv.  20. 


t  V.  22,  23. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


-  209 

cipal  Grecian  states  will  afford  the  same  demonstration.”* 
This  was  written  of  the  Judea  and  Greece  that  passed 
the  era  of  depopulation  and  latifundism  ;  we  shall  see  to 
what  both  countries  were  reduced. 

The  sacred  volume  informs  us,  in  several  parts,  that  the 
“promised  land”  was  “divided  by  lot”  “among  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  Israel.”!  So  that  the  humblest  individual  in  each 
tribe  had  as  good  a  right  to  “  dwell  in  the  land  ”  and 
“  eat  of  the  fruit  thereof  ”  as  its  highest  “  prince  ”  and 
“  ancient.”  In  lieu  of  land,  the  tribe  of  Levi  was  allotted 
tithes  from  the  others.  J osephus  gives  us  a  description  of 
this  “  allotment  ”  which  I  consider  worth  transcribing,  as 
furnishing  a  useful  lesson  to  the  land-surveyors  and 
“  stripe  ’’-makers  of  the  present  day,  the  National  Building 
and  Land  Investment  Company  not  excepted  : — 

“  As  also  he  ( J oshua)  thought  it  reasonable  that  they 
should  choose  one  man  out  of  every  tribe,  and  he  such  as 
had  the  testimony  of  extraordinary  virtue,  who  should 
measure  the  land  faithfully,  and,  without  any  fallacy  or 
deceit,  should  inform  them  of  its  real  magnitude. 

“  Now,  Joshua,  when  he  had  spoken  to  them,  found  that 
the  multitude  approved  of  his  proposal ;  so  he  sent  men 
to  measure  their  country,  and  sent  with  them  some 
geometricians,  who  could  not  easily  fail  of  knowing  the 
truth,  on  account  of  their  skill  in  that  art.  He  also  gave 
them  charge  to  estimate  the  measure  of  that  part  of  the 
land  that  was  most  fruitful,  and  what  was  not  so  good : 
for  such  is  the  nature  of  the  land  of  Canaan,  that  one  may 
see  large  plains,  and  such  as  are  exceedingly  fit  to  produce 
fruit,  which,  yet,  if  they  were  compared  with  other  parts 
of  the  country,  might  be  reckoned  exceedingly  fruitful, 
yet,  if  it  be  compared  with  the  fields  about  Jericho  and 

*  Sadlier,  107,  referring  to  Boerkle’s  “Athens,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  248. 
t  Numbers  xxxiv.,  xxxvi.,  Josue ,  xiii.,  and  foil. 


0 


210 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


to  those  that  belong  to  J erusalem,  will  appear  to  be  of  no 
account  at  all;  and,  although  it  so  falls  out  that  these  people 
have  but  a  very  little  of  this  sort  of  land,  and  it  is  for  the 
main  mountainous  also,  yet  does  it  not  come  behind  other 
parts  on  account  of  its  exceeding  goodness  and  beauty ; 
for  which  reason  J oshua  thought  that  the  lands  for  the 
tribes  ought  to  be  decided  by  estimation  of  its  goodness, 
it  often  happening  that  one  acre  of  some  sort  of  land  was 
equivalent  to  a  thousand  other  acres.  . .  . 

“  And  Joshua  took  both  Eleazer  and  the  senate,  and 
with  them  the  heads  of  the  tribes,  and  distributed  the 
land  to  the  nine  tribes  and  to  the  half  tribe  of  Manasseh, 
according  to  the  largeness  of  each  tribe  ;  so  when  he  had 
cast  lots,  Judah  had  assigned  him  by  lot,”  &c.* 

Thus  it  appears  that  at  the  original  partition  of  Canaan 
among  the  chosen  people  each  had  but  “  very  little  of  this 
sort  of  land  and  the  same  author  informs  us  that  in  due 
time  the  tribes  “  left  off,  the  one  to  kill,  and  the  other  to 
expose  himself  to  danger,  and  had  time  to  till  the  ground.” 
They  “applied  themselves  to  the  cultivation  of  the 
land,  which  producing  them  great  plenty  and  riches, 
they  neglected  the  regular  disposition  of  their  settlement, 
and  indulged  themselves  in  luxury  and  pleasures.”! 

They  violated  the  following  ordinance,  as  given  by 
Josephus  from  the  Talmud,  and  corresponding  in  sub¬ 
stance  with  the  injunctions  of  Holy  Writ,  and  they  paid 
the  penalty  : — 

“  Let  it  not  be  esteemed  lawful  to  remove  boundaries, 
neither  your  own  nor  those  with  whom  we  are  at  peace. 
Have  a  care  you  do  not  take  those  landmarks  away  which 
are,  as  it  were,  a  divine  and  unshaken  limitation  of  rights 
made  by  God  himself,  to  last  for  ever,  since  this  going 
beyond  limits,  and  gaining  ground  on  others,  is  the  occa- 


*  “  Hist.  Antiq.  Jews,”  b.  v. 


+  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


211 


sion  of  wars  and  seditions  (“  agrarian  outrages  ”)  ;  for 
those  that  remove  boundaries  are  not  far  off  an  attempt 
to  subvert  the  laws.”* 

The  stiff-necked  race  did,  in  course  of  time,  begin  to 
change  landmarks,  and  “  woe  ”  was  their  retribution. 
“  Woe  to  you,”  warned  the  sublime  prophet  Isaias,  “  that 
join  house  to  house  and  add  field  to  field,  even  to  the 
end  of  the  place.  Shall  you  alone  dwell  in  the  midst  of 
the  earth  %  Those  things  are  in  my  ear,  saith  the  Lord 
of  Hosts,  unless  many  great  and  fair  houses  become 
desolate.  For  ten  acres  of  vineyard  shall  yield  one 
little  measure,  and  thirty  bushels  of  seed  shall  yield 
three.”!  Thus  is  the  crime  of  consolidation  and  its 
punishment,  sterility,  brought  together  before  our  eyes, 
again  illustrating  the  truth  that — 


“  Nulla  unquam  lex  justior, 

Quam  artifices  necis  ai'te  perire  sua.  ” 

There  could  be  no  more  appropriate  expiation  of  agrarian 
monopoly  than  barrenness  of  the  monopolized  soil ;  and 
barrenness  with  a  vengeance  came  upon  the  land. 

“  As  for  my  people,  their  oppressors  have  stripped 

them,  and  women  have  ruled  over  them .  The 

Lord  will  enter  into  judgment  with  the  ancients  of  his 
people  and  its  princes ;  for  you  have  devoured  the  vineyard , 
and  the  spoil  of  the  poor  is  in  your  hands. v !  For  which  he 
threatens  in  no  idle  words:  “I  will  take  away  the 
hedge  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  wasted  ;  I  will  break  down 
the  wall  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  trodden  down.  And  I 
will  make  it  desolate ;  it  shall  not  be  pruned,  and  it 
shall  not  be  digged ;  but  briars  and  thorns  shall  come  up ; 
and  I  will  command  the  clouds  to  rain  no  more  upon 

*  “  Antiq.,”  b.  iv.  p.  77. 

X  Ibid.  iii.  12,  14. 


t  Isa.  v.  8,  9,  10. 


212 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


it.”*  And  this  visitation  came  no  less  on  the  material 
field  than  on  “  the  house  of'  Israel.”  For  the  “  princes  ” 
continued  to  be  “faithless,  companions  of  thieves,  to 
love  bribes,  to  run  after  rewards,  to  judge  not  for  the 
fatherless,”  or  to  listen  to  “  the  widow’s  cause,”  “  until 
the  cities  were  wasted  without  inhabitants,  and  the 
houses  without  man,  and  the  land  left  desolate”\ 

I  make  these  references  not  in  the  spirit  of  fanaticism, 
or  prophet  or  Savonarola-like  threat,  holding  out  the  fear 
of  similar  chastisements  from  above  to  the  Irish  great 
ones  of  the  present  day.  Believing,  with  an  undoubting 
belief,  that  the  same  unsleeping  eye  of  Providence,  which 
watched  the  ill-doings  of  the  “  stiff-necked  ”  race,  is  no 
less  vigilant  to-day  than  it  was  three  thousand  years  ago — 
for  with  it  there  was  no  yesterday,  there  will  be  no  to¬ 
morrow — I  am  no  less  satisfied  of  the  ridicule  and  scorn 
with  which  any  appeal  to  a  sense  of  the  supernatural,  or 
a  dread  of  its  visitations,  would  be  received  by  the  mat¬ 
ter  and  mammon-seeking  “  princes  and  ancients  ”  of  the 
present  age.  Yet,  nothing  the  less,  “  sin  will  be  added 
to  sin,”  and  even  the  “  sin  (not)  atoned  for  will  be  for¬ 
gotten,”  until  the  cup  of  guilt  be  filled,  and  then  “  Mine 
is  revenge,  I  shall  repay.” 

If  there  is  a  Providence  above — as  there  is — the  un¬ 
expiated  and  yet  accumulating  sins  of  English  law-makers 
and  Irish  landlords  will  yet,  without  any  special  super¬ 
natural  intervention,  but  by  the  simple  operation  of 
second  and  natural  causes,  bring  with  them  their  merited 
chastisement. 

I  say  “English  law-makers,”  for,  if  the  prophet  de¬ 
nounces  woe  on  those  “  who  add  house  to  house  and 
field  to  field,”  he  no  less  solemnly  proclaims  it  to  the 
“  makers  of  wicked  laws  — 


*  Isa.  v.  5,  6. 


f  Ibid.  i.  23,  vi.  11. 


SINCE  THE  EE  VOLUTION. 


213 


“  Woe  to  them  that  make  wicked  laws,  and,  when 
they  write,  write  injustice. 

“  To  oppress  the  poor  in  judgment,  and  to  do  violence 
to  the  cause  of  the  humble  of  my  people,  that  widows 
might  be  their  prey,  and  that  they  might  rob  the  father¬ 
less.”* 

Cod  forbid,  however,  that  it  should  be  as  with  Judea, 
that  “  every  place  where  there  were  a  thousand  vines,  at 
a  thousand  pieces  of  silver,  shall  become  thorns  and 
briars ;  .  .  .  for  briars  and  thorns  shall  be  in  all  the 
land  ;  but  as  for  the  hills  that  shall  be  raked  with  a  rake, 
the  fear  of  thorns  and  briars  shall  not  come  thither, 
but  they  shall  be  for  the  ox  to  feed  on,  and  for  the  lesser 
cattle  to  tread  upon.f 


Since  the  foregoing  was  written,  a  very  interesting  letter  on 
the  “  Irish  and  Israelitish  Land-laws  ”  has  been  addressed  to  the 
Irish  Times,  in  which  the  writer  shows  that  the  only  “  rent”  paid 
in  Judea  was  the  tithes  or  tenth  part  of  the  produce  allotted  to  the 
tribe  of  Levi  in  lieu  of  land.  But  this  could  hardly  be  called 
“rent”  at  all,  inasmuch  as  every  twelfth  acre  was  a  kind  of  toll, 
superadded  to  the  share  of  each  tribe,  in  consequence  of  the  ex¬ 
clusion  of  the  Levitical  tribe  from  agrarian  occupations. 

The  letter  may  be  found  in  tjie  Appendix. 


*  Isa.  x.  1  and  2. 


t  Ibicl  vii.  23,  24,  25. 


214 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


THE  OLD  PERSIAN  MONARCHY. 

One  of  the  greatest  names  among  the  legislators,  no 
less  than  the  conquerors,  of  antiquity,  is  Cyrus.  Having 
amalgamated  under  his  single  sceptre  the  kingdoms  of 
Medea,  Assyria,  Lydia,  and  Persia  proper,  he  at  once 
set  about  governing  his  vast  empire  according  to  the 
laws  of  reason  and  common  sense ;  and  to  agriculture 
he  specially  applied  himself.  The  author  of  a  very  in¬ 
structive  book,  entitled,  “  L’Esprit  de  L’Histoire,”  thus 
refers  to  the  subject  : — 

“  L’ agriculture  etait  particulierement  honorde.  L’ad- 
ministration  ne  croyoit  pas  qu’il  y  eut  des  details 
indignes  de  son  attention.  Le  gouverneur  de  la  province 
la  mieux  cultivde  obtinoit  le  plus  de  grace.  C’est  encore 
aujourdhuit  la  meme  chose  dans  la  Chine.  Cyrus  le 
Jeune  encourageoit  l’agriculture  par  son  example;  et 
la  plus  grande  fete  du  peuple  Chinois  est  le  jour  ou  son 
empereur  met  luimeme  la  main  a  la  charrue.”* 

Thus,  as  in  modern  China,  so  in  ancient  Persia,  agri¬ 
culture  was  held  in  special  estimation.  “  The  governors 
of  the  best  cultivated  provinces  obtained  special  rewards .” 
No  latifundism,  no  “  consolidation,”  no  substitution  of 
beast  for  man,  could  have  obtained  there.  And  yet, 
we  boast  of  “  progress” — the  progress  of  the  few  in 
opulence  and  luxury,  of  the  many  in  misery  and 
despair. 

*  “  Special  honor  was  paid  to  agriculture.  The  government 
did  not  think  any  detail  thereof  beneath  its  attention.  The 
governor  of  the  best  cultivated  province  was  held  highest  in 
favor.  It  is  just  the  same  in  China.  Cyrus  the  Younger  en¬ 
couraged  agriculture  by  his  example ;  and  the  greatest  feast  of 
the  Chinese  people  is  the  day  on  which  their  Emperor  puts  himself 
his  hand  to  the  plough.” — “  Esprit  de  1’Histoire,”  vol.  i.,  p.  101. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


215 


GREECE. 

To  come  nearer  to  modern,  though  yet  very  ancient 
times,  I  can  do  nothing  better  than  quote  from  Thorn¬ 
ton’s  “  Plea  for  Peasant  Proprietors,”  in  his  references 
to  Greece  and  Rome.  Of  the  former  he  writes  : — 

“  A  very  brief  reference  to  Greece,”  writes  he,  “  will 
suffice  to  show  that  her  small  proprietors  of  the  heroic 
and  republican  periods  never  multiplied  into  a  swarm  of 
paupers.  Polybius  remarked  that,  in  his  time,  though 
one  of  comparative  prosperity,  afflicted  neither  by  wars 
nor  epidemic  diseases,  population  was  fast  diminishing, 
so  that  houses  were  left  empty,  and  cities  resembled 
abandoned  hives.  Strabo,  who  visited  Greece  about  a 
century  after  its  incorporation  with  the  Roman  empire, 
was  surprised  at  nothing  so  much  as  the  scarcity  of  in¬ 
habitants.  Messenia  was,  for  the  most  part,  deserted. 
Laconia  contained  but  thirty  of  the  hundred  small 
towns  for  which  it  had  once  been  celebrated.  Arcadia? 
Oetolia,  and  Acarnania  were  solitudes.  Of  the  towns 
of  Doris  and  of  the  Aenians  scarcely  a  trace  was  left. 
Of  all,  save  three,  of  the  Boeotian  cities,  nothing 
remained  but  ruins  and  names.  In  the  reign  of  Trajan, 
according  to  Plutarch,  the  whole  of  Greece  could  not 
furnish  more  than  three  thousand  heavy  armed  men, 
the  number  raised  by  Megara  alone  for  the  Persian  wars. 
Bishop  Thirlwall,  adopting,  in  part,  the  opinion  of  Poly¬ 
bius,  attributes  this  remarkable  depopulation  to  uni¬ 
versal  luxury  and  depravity  of  morals ;  but  these  are 
plagues  which  seldom  extend  beyond  the  wealthy  class 
and  inhabitants  of  cities.  A  better  explanation  is 
afforded  by  what  Strabo  says  of  the  accumulation  of  'pro¬ 
perty  in  few  hands.  ‘The  whole  island  of  Cephalonia 


216 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


formed  but  a  single  estate ;  and  in  continental  Greece 
scarcely  any  land  was  in  tillage,  almost  the  whole  being 
occupied  by  vast  sheep-walks  or  by  pastures  for  cattle 
and  horses.  Desolation  had  evidently  run  the  same 
course  in  Greece  as  in  Italy — many  small  farms  had 
been  united  to  form  a  few  enormous  estates.  The  new  land¬ 
lords  had  expelled  the  remains  of  the  ancient  peasantry, 
and,  having  cleared  their  domains  of  men,  had  supplied 
their  place  with  herds  and  beasts.’  Modern  Highland 
lairds,”  continues  Thornton,  “  may,  perhaps,  be  glad  to 
learn  that  their  own  clearances  can  be  justified  by  such 
illustrious  precedents.”*  For  “  Highland  lairds,”  write 
Irish  landlords ,  and  the  picture  of  Grecian  desolation  of 
two  thousand  years  ago  is  drawn  this  day  in  Ireland. 

Thus  do  we  find  that  singular  law  uniformly  asserting 
its  supremacy  at  all  times,  in  every  clime  and  place,  that 
co-existent  with  minute  or  moderate  cultivation,  with 
a  fair  partition  of  the  land  among  the  masses  of  the 
people,  thoroughly  secured  to  them  by  an  equitable 
tenure,  did  plenty  and  happiness  reign  among  the 
people,  and  virtue  and  power  in  the  state.  Consequent 
on  their  being  supplanted  by  consolidation,  came  vice, 
misery,  and  individual  and  national  ruin. 


*  “  A  Plea  for  Peasant  Proprietors,”  &c.,  p.  74,  1848. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


217 


CHAPTEE  XIY. 

ANCIENT  ITALY. 


“  Modum  agri  imprimis  servaiulum  putavere  antiqui,  quippe  ita  censebant 
satius  esse  minus  serere  et  melius  arare.” — Pliny ,  11  Nat.  Hist b.  xviii.,  c.  7* 


Passing  from  Greece  to  Italy,  we  find  a  parallel  state  of 
tilings — an  original  mediocrity  of  territorial  possessions 
with  comfort,  happiness,  and  national  prosperity ;  lati- 
fundism,  with  all  the  vices  of  exorbitant  wealth  in  its 
train. 

So  far  from  being  ashamed  of  the  plough,  it  was  their 
chief  occupation,  and  the  pride  no  less  of  the  patrician 
than  of  the  plebeian,  so  that  they  could  all  be  truly  desig¬ 
nated  in  the  words  of  Horace  : — 

“  Agricolse  prisci  fortes  parvoque  beati,”f 

11  Brave  old  husbandmen,  whose  wants  were  few  ” — 
until  empire  brought  luxury,  and  luxury  brought  empire 
to  ruin. 

The  following  pithy  description,  borrowed  from  an 
interesting  and  instructive  little  work,  entitled  “  Manners 
of  the  Homans/’  is  well  worth  reproduction  : — 

“  Home,  therefore,  convulsed  in  turns  by  internal  dis¬ 
cord  and  foreign  hostility,  only  enjoyed  repose  at  intervals. 

*  “The  ancients  considered  it  best  to  have  moderate  farms  ;  for 
they  thus  thought  it  better  to  sow  less  and  till  better.” 

f  “Epist.,”  b.  ii.,  Ep.  1,  line  139. 


218 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


This  leisure  was  devoted  to  agriculture ,  in  which  all  classes 
were  then  equally  occupied  ;  and  the  patrician  and  ple¬ 
beian  orders,  so  distinct  in  the  city,  were  confounded  in 
the  country,  in  the  common  avocations  of  husbandry. 
The  first  magistrates  and  the  greatest  generals  were 
engaged  in  the  labors  of  the  field ;  and  the  same  hand 
which  directed  the  plough  was  often  chosen  to  guide  the 
helm  of  state,  or  to  wield  the  truncheon  of  its  armies. 
History  presents  us  with  many  such  examples,  not  only 
in  the  infancy  of  the  commonwealth,  but  even  in  those 
more  flourishing  times,  when  the  Bomans,  already  mas¬ 
ters  of  all  Italy,  had  extended  their  empire  beyond  the 
seas.  Quintus  Cincinnatus,  who  was  found  at  work  in 
his  field  by  those  who  went  to  announce  to  him  his 
appointment  to  the  dictatorship,  is  not  a  singular  example. 
M.  Curius,  after  having  conquered  the  Sabines  and  the 
Samnites,  and  after  having  driven  Pyrrhus  out  of  Italy, 
possessed  only  a  small  farm,  which  he  cultivated  himself. 
Cato  the  censor,  struck  with  the  simplicity  of  manners 
and  the  elevation  of  mind  of  its  master,  accepted  him  as 
his  model,  and,  applying  himself  to  agriculture — on  which 
he  has  left  some  treatises — did  not  disdain  to  work  with 
his  slaves,  nor,  when  their  toil  was  over,  to  partake  of 
their  coarse  fare.  And  Scipio  Africanus,  after  he  had 
signalized  himself  by  the  defeat  of  the  greatest  of  the 
Carthagenian  generals,  after  having  conquered  Hannibal 
and  rendered  Carthage  tributary  to  Borne,  retired  to  the 
cultivation  of  his  garden. 

“  Far  from  considering  themselves  degraded  by  these 
rustic  labors,  the  senators  were  almost  constantly  occu¬ 
pied  in  them  ;  and  the  custom  of  residing  on  their  estates 
was  so  general  that  there  was  a  regular  establishment  of 
couriers,  whose  duty  it  was  to  summon  them  when  any 
extraordinary  business  required  their  attendance  in  the 
senate.  This  general  attention  to  husbandry  was  then, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


219 


indeed,  as  much  the  effect  of  necessity  as  choice ;  for,  the 
lands  of  the  commonwealth  having  been  divided  in  equal 
and  very  minute  portions  among  all  its  subjects, 
(citizens  ?)  each  was  obliged  to  labor  for  his  own  sub¬ 
sistence,  and  a  long  time  elapsed  ere  the  introduction 
of  commerce,  and  the  consequent  acquisition  of  wealth, 
enabled  individuals  to  purchase  the  estates  of  their 
fellow-citizens,  and  to  obtain  a  revenue  from  the  rent 
of  land,  rather  than  from  its  cultivation. 

“  Thus,  in  the  early  and  the  happiest  period  of  the  re¬ 
public,  the  Romans  were  all,  except  the  lowest  arti- 
zans,  at  once  agriculturists  and  soldiers ;  and  though 
for  the  most  part  residing  always  in  the  country,  yet 
being  denizens  of  Rome,  they  were  considered  as  citi¬ 
zens,  and  were  addressed  under  the  common  name  of 
Quirites 

By  degrees,  however,  this  simple  and  happy  state  of 
things  gave  way  to  ambition,  and  a  spirit  of  individual 
aggrandisement,  regardless  of  national  interests  and  fame. 
The  evil  genius  of  consolidation,  first  stealthily,  and, 
soon  after,  defiantly,  appeared  on  the  scene ;  so  that, 
about  the  year  376  before  Christ,  Licinius,  himself  a  ple¬ 
beian,  elected  tribune  of  the  people,  obtained,  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  patricians,  a  law,  known,  from  his  name, 
as  the  “  Licinian  law,”  prohibiting  the  possession  of  over 
five  acres  of  land  to  any  individual;  and  this  on  the 
not  unreasonable  ground  that  no  one  could  cultivate  more 
with  profit  or  success.  Like  many  more  such  good  laws, 
in  ancient  and  modern  times,  this  soon  began  to  fall  into 
desuetude ;  so  much  so,  that  its  very  propounder  was 
condemned,  twenty  years  after  its  promulgation,  to  a  fine 
of  10  Roman  asses,  or  about  £275,  for  its  violation — a 
violation  more  technical  than  real,  as  his  1,000  acres 


*Pp.  2,  3,  &c. 


220 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


were  held  partly  in  the  name  of  his  son.*  However,  in 
course  of  time  this  salutary  restriction  became  totally  re¬ 
laxed,  but  was  renewed,  with  increased  vigor,  two  hundred 
years  after,  by  the  famous  brothers,  the  Gracchi,  who  both 
fell  victims  to  their  zeal  in  its  enforcement.  And  thus, 
by  the  gradual  relaxation  and  final  abandonment  of  a 
prudent  law,  proving  a  check  on  the  acquisition  of  ex¬ 
orbitant  wealth  on  the  part  of  a  few,  at  the  expense 
of  the  very  life-blood  of  the  many,  had  Eome  arrived  at 
that  deplorable  state  described  in  the  extracts  to  follow. 

Writing  on  ancient  Italy — its  agricultural  and  social 
position — the  eminent  author  referred  to,  Mr.  Thornton, 
says  :  “  One  hundred  and  forty  years  before  the  birth  of 
Christ,  as  Tiberius  Gracchus  returned  from  a  campaign 
in  Spain,  he  found  remaining  in  Italy  neither  peasant 
properties  nor  even  a  native  peasantry.  The  scene 
which  presented  itself  to  him  was  that  of  a  country 
whose  only  cultivators  were  foreign  slaves.  Landed  pro¬ 
perty  was  engrossed  by  a  small  number  of  rich  men,  and 
the  laborers  employed  on  it  were  the  captives  taken  in 
war,  who  were  shut  up  at  night  in  dungeons,  and  who 
worked  by  day  in  gangs,  under  task-masters,  like  negroes 
in  the  West  Indies.  The  Campagna — which,  while 
tenanted  by  men  working  for  themselves,  1  those  most 
intelligent,  most  industrious,  and  most  successful  of  all 
employers/  had  resembled  Flanders  in  cultivation,  with 
much  more  variety  and  picturesqueness — had  been  left  to 
slaves  working  listlessly  for  a  rich  and  careless  absentee, 
and  had  begun  already  to  wear  its  present  bleak  and 
dreary  aspect.  Houses  had  been  thrown  down,  fruit 

*  ‘  ‘  Niebuhr  informs  us  that,  prior  to  the  expulsion  of  the  Tar- 
quins,  the  quantity  of  land  in  each  one’s  occupation  did  not  exceed 
two  jagera — less  than  two  acres.  The  Licinian  law  made  seven 
jurjera ,  or  about  five  acres,  the  utmost  limit.” — Thornton’s 
“Plea,”  p.  66. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


221 


trees  rooted  up ;  the  decay  of  agriculture  had  been  fol¬ 
lowed  by  the  generation  of  malaria,  which  rendered  the 
climate  unfit  for  human  residence.  Tillage  was  ultimately 
superseded  entirely  by  pasturage,  and  cattle  browsed  on  the 
site  of  many  a  happy  homestead,  and  many  a  town  re¬ 
nowned  in  story.”*  Let  the  tourist,  on  entering  the 
towns  of  Ballinrobe,  Castlebar,  Westport,  in  this  county 
of  Mayo,  cast  his  eye  about  him,  and  he  will  find  verified 
to  the  letter  this  touching  complaint  of  “  cattle  browsing 
on  the  site  of  many  a  happy  homestead.”  Let  him,  on 
his  way  from  Ballinrobe  to  Westport,  pass  through  the 
parish  of  Aughagower,  once  so  populous,  always  so  in¬ 
telligent,  and  see  areas  of  square  miles,  many  “  sites  of 
happy  homesteads,”  taken  from  God’s  image  and  likeness, 
and  given  up  to  those  “  beasts  of  the  field  ”  which  were 
created  for  him.t  Where  once  there  were  scores  of  com¬ 
fortable  villages,  to-day  are  to  be  seen  only  the  sparse 
houses  of  caretakers  and  herds.  Twenty  years  ago,  and 
more,  the  greater  part  of  this  crying,  agonizing  desola¬ 
tion  was  wrought.  Alas !  that  this  very  day  it  should 
be  repeated  on  a  scale  of  leviathan  dimensions.  There 
are  Knockrooska  and  Maas,  last  year  hives  of  agricul¬ 
tural  industry — to-day  “  consolidated  and  enclosed ”  for  the 
brother  of  the  landlord.  u  Is  there  no  hand  on  high”  to 
arrest  this  fiendish  work  ?  Or  is  it  to  continue  until  des¬ 
pair  itself  supply  the  outraged  people  with  the  last 
weapons  of  self-defence  % 

The  result  of  consolidation  in  Italy  is  deplored,  in 
prose  and  verse,  by  many  of  its  most  illustrious  authors. 

*  “  Plea  for  Peasant  Proprietors,”  p.  169. 

+  Captain  Houston  occupies  two  hundred  square  miles,  out  of 
which  all  the  inhabitants  were  banished  by  Lord  Sligo,  except  a  few 
herds.  More  recently,  the  noble  lord  has  cleared  off  the  townland  of 
Knockrooska,  and  “  noticed  to  quit”  the  A laases,  to  be  given  as 
grass  farms  to  his  brother,  Lord  John  Browne. 


222 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Pliny,  Tacitus,  Seneca,  Columella,  Virgil,,  and  even 
Horace  himself,  with  more  reserve  as  an  imperial  para¬ 
site,  have  lent  their  pens,  not  to  the  advocacy  of  the 
tenant  cause,  hut  to  the  bewailing  of  its  ruin.  “  To  confess 
the  truth,”  says  Pliny,  “  large  farms  have  ruined  Italy ,  and 
now  the  provinces.  Six  lords  owned  half  Africa  when  Prince 
Nero  put  them  to  death” — “  Verumque  confitentibus  latifundia 
perdidere  Italiam,  jamvero  et  provincias.  .  .  .  Sex  domini 
semissem  Africce  possidebant  cum  interefecit  eos  princeps 
Nero.”*  “  Formerly,”  says  Tacitus,  “  provisions  were 
conveyed  for  the  legions  from  Italy  to  distant  provinces; 
nor  is  it  very  fertile  itself;  but  (now)  we  work  up  Africa 
and  Egypt,  and  the  existence  of  the  people  is  left  to 
ships  and  chance  ” — “  At  olim  ex  Italia  legionibus,  longuin- 
qucis  in  provincias  commeatus  potabcmtur ;  nec  infecunditate 
laboratur  ;  sed  A fricam  potius  et  Egyptum  exercemus,  ncivi- 
busque  et  casibus  vita  populi permissa  estP  f  And,  elsewhere 
— “  At  Hercule,  nemo  refert  quod  Italia  externce  opis  incliget, 
quod  vita  populi  Romani  per  incerta  maris  et  tempestatum  quo- 
ticlie  volvitur,  ac  nisi  provinciarum  copice  et  dominis  et  sends, 
et  agris  subvenerint,  nostra  nos  scilicet  nernora  nostroe- 
que  villse  tuebuntur  ?  Hanc  P.  C.  Curam  sustinet  prin- 
cips  :  Hsec  omissa  funditus  rempublicam  trahat :  reliquis 
intra  animum  medendum  est :  nos  pudor,  pauperes  neces- 
sitas,  divites  satietas  in  melius  mutet.”  J  “  Tracts  of 
country,”  writes  Seneca,  “  which  formerly  belonged  to 
whole  nations,  are  now  managed  by  a  single  workhouse  of 
slaves,  and  modern  bailiffs  have  more  extensive  dominions 
than  the  kings  of  former  days” — “  Arata  quondam populis 
rura  singulorum  ergastulorum  sunt ;  latiusque  nunc  villici 
qucm  olim  reges  imperant.”§  Columella  denounces  “  the 
influential  and  overpowerful  class  wdio  own  the  lands  of 
nations  (entire),  which  they  are  not  able  even  to  go  round, 

*  “Nat.  Hist.,”  1.  xviii.,  c.  7.  +  “  Annal.,”  lib.  xii.,  c.  43. 

%  “Annal.,”  lib.  xi.,  c.  53.  §  “  Controversial’  v.  1.  5. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


22  3 


but  abandon  to  be  trampled  by  cattle  and  devastated  by 
wild  beasts,  or  occupied  by  citizens  given  to  bondage 
for  debt,  and  by  workhouses’  ’ — “  More  prcepotcntium  qui 
qjossident  fines  gentium  quos  ne  circumire  quoque  valent 
sed  jproculcandos  prendibus  et  vastandos  feris  derelinquent , 
aut  occupatos  nexa  civium  et  ergastulos  tenerit”* 

And  again : — 

“  Nec  dubium  quin  minus  reddat  laxus  ager  non  recte 
cultus  quam  angus  eximie  ....  ideoque  post  exactos 

reges  Liciniana  ilia  septena  jugera . magores  quaestu 

antiquis  attulere  quam  nunc  probent  nobis  amplissima 
veterata.  .  .  .  Ubi  Dii  cultus  agrorum  progeniem  suam 
docuerunt,  ibi  nunc  ad  hastam  locamus,  ut  nobis  ex  trans- 
marinis  provinciis  advehatur  frumentum  ne  fama  labo- 
remus.”f 

And  elsewhere,  in  the  body  of  his  work,  the  same 
eminent  authority  relates  the  following  very  interesting 
story,  as  illustrating  the  advantages  of  minute  cultivation : 
“  Groecinus,”  says  he,  “  tells  us  in  his  book  on  vines^  that 
he  used  to  often  hear  from  his  father  that  one  Paridius 
had  two  daughters,  and  a  farm  planted  with  vines,  the 
third  part  of  which  he  gave  the  elder  daughter  as  dower, 
and  yet  that  he  used  to  reap  as  large  a  return  from  the 
other  two  parts  ;  that  he  got  the  second  daughter  mar¬ 
ried  in  half  the  rest  of  the  land,  without  diminishing  his 
former  return.  From  which  what  follows,  except  that 
this  third  part  of  the  farm  was  better  cultivated  than  the 

*  “  De  re  Rustica  Proem.” 

t  “  Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  a  wide  field,  ill-tilled,  gives  less 
return  than  a  well-tilled  small  one.  .  .  .  And,  therefore,  after  the 
expulsion  of  the  kings,  that  Licinian  seven-acre  ....  holdings 
brought  the  ancients  more  profit  than  the  widest  farm-fallow  fields 

return  us  now . Where  the  gods  taught  their  race  tillage, 

there  we  now  hire  out  at  auction  (competition  rents),  that  grain 
may  be  brought  us  from  transmarine  provinces,  lest  we  perish  of 
hunger. 5  ’ — Ibid. 


224 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


entire  liad  been  before  T*  So  that  two  thousand  years  ago 
minute  and  careful  cultivation,  in  Italy,  carried  with  it 
the  same  rewards,  in  the  shape  of  a  plentiful  return,  that 
it  does  to-day  in  Tuscany  and  Flanders.  But  then  there 
existed  fixity  of  tenure,  too.  It  does  not  appear  from 
the  account  of  Columella  that  Paridius  had  to  go  to  the 
“  master,”  or  his  agent,  to  “  get  leave  ”  for  the  marriage 
of  his  daughters,  or  the  apportioning  them  a  reasonable 
share  of  his  farm.  The  Irish  tenant-at-will  who  would  pre¬ 
sume  on  such  “  an  infringement  on  the  rules  of  the  estate 
would  never  have  the  chance  of  repeating  his  audacity. f 

“Turn  longos  juugere  fines 
Agrorum  et  quondum  duro  sulcata  Camilli 
Vomere,  et  antiquos  Curiorum  passa  ligones 
Longa  sub  ignotis  extendere  rura  colonis,” 

was  the  plaint  of  Lucan, J  such  as  might  be  echoed 
by  any  living  Irish  bard  to-day.  “  Then  (they 
began)  to  *  consolidate  ’  (jungere)  large  tracts  of  land, 
and  to  lay  down,  under  unknown  tenants,  the 
wide  fields  once  tilled  with  the  sturdy  plough  of 
Camillus,  or  the  old-fashioned  spade  of  the  Curii.”  Thus 
consolidation  went  on  apace  in  the  great  republic  after 
she  began  to  get  drunk  with  the  blood  of  nations.  The 
result  was,  as  might  be  expected,  that  luxury  and  idleness 
■went  step  by  step,  side  by  side,  and  that  the  mistress  of 
the  world  had,  as  Tacitus  complains,  to  depend  for  her 
daily  bread  “  on  foreign  supplies  and  on  the  mercy  of 
wind  and  wave.” 

Not  so  in  the  days  of  small  farms  and  good  cultivation. 
Pliny  assures  us  that  “  provisions  were  wonderfully 
cheap  ”  (“  annonse  vilitas  incredibilis  erat”),  but  that  the 
grain  did  not  come  from  large  fallows,  referred  to  by 
Columella.  (“  Nec  a  latifundiis  singulorum  contingebat 

*  “  De  re  Kustica,”  1.  iv.  c.  3.  +  See  Appendix. 

X  “  Pharsalia,”  1.  i. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


225 


arcentium  vicinos  ” — “Not  from  the  fields  of  the  extermi¬ 
nators  of  their  neighbors.”)  Captain  Houston  and  Lord 
John  Browne  will  never  send  a  bushel  of  grain  to  the 
market.  Their  Durhams  and  Cheviots  will  all  go  to  feed, 
not  the  hardworking  Irish  people,  but  the  “  great  gentle¬ 
men”  of  England,  which  is  “  great  by  our  misery.” 

He  also  finds  another  reason  for  the  productiveness  of 
the  small  holdings,  and  the  comparative,  and  even  abso¬ 
lute,  sterility  of  the  consolidated  estates  in  the  introduc¬ 
tion  of  slave  labor. 

“  What  then,”  said  he,  “  was  the  cause  of  such  rich 
returns  1  The  lands  were  then  tilled  by  the  hands  of 
the  commanders  themselves  ;  whether  we  are  to  believe 
that  the  earth  was  proud  of  a  laurelled  plough,  and  a 
ploughman  who  had  obtained  a  triumph  ;  or  that  the 
latter  managed  their  seeds  as  carefully  as  their  wars,  and 
laid  out  their  fields  with  as  much  diligence  as  their 
camps ;  or  that  all  things  are  more  successful  in  honorable 
hands,  since  they  are  done  with  better  attention.  The 
honors  conferred  on  Seranus  found  him  sowing  seed  ; 
hence  the  sirname.  .  .  .  But  now,  chained  feet,  condemned 
hands,  and  branded  faces  do  the  same  work.  .  .  .  And  we 
wonder  that  slaves  do  not  produce  as  much  as  com¬ 
manders.”* 

As  in  Persia,  so  in  Kome,  good  husbandry  was  specially 
honored  and  rewarded,  and  slovenly  cultivation  con- 

*  “  Qucenam  ergo  tantoe  ubertatis  causa  fuit  ?  Ipsorum  tunc 
manibus  imperatorum  colebantur  agri ;  ut  fas  est  credere  gaudente 
terra  vomere  laureato  et  triumphal!  aratore,  sive  illi  eadem  cura 
semina  tractabant  qua  bella,  eademque  diligentia  arva  disponebant 
qua  castra  ;  sive  honestis  manibus  omnia  latius  proveniunt,  quo- 
niarn  et  curiosius  hunt.  Serentem  inveniunt  dati  lionores 
Seranum.  ...  At  nunc  eadem  ilia  vincti  pedes,  damnato  manus, 
inscriptique  vultus  exercent.  .  .  .  Sed  nos  miramur  ergastulorum 
non  eadem  emolumenta  esse  quse  fuerint  imperatorum.” — “Nat. 
Hist.,”  ib.,  c.  iv. 


P 


226 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


sidered  a  disgrace.*  From  this  one  fact  ire  may  guess 
with  what  care  agriculture  was  looked  after  in  ancient 
Borne,  that  the  senate  returned  public  thanks  for,  and 
ordered  to  be  published  in  Latin  for  the  public  benefit, 
an  extensive  work  of  twenty-eight  books  by  Mago,  the 
Carthagenian — a  fact,  too,  showing  how  the  great  African 
state  attended  to  the  same  industry. 

Sismondi  thus  recapitulates  the  condition  of  Borne 
under  these  altered  circumstances. 

“  A  single  proprietor,”  writes  he,  “  gradually  became 
possessed  of  provinces  (the  very  complaint  of  Seneca  and 
Pliny),  which  had  furnished  the  republic  with  the  occa¬ 
sion  of  decreeing  more  than  one  triumph  to  its  generals  ; 
while  he  amassed  wealth  so  disproportionate  to  the  wants  of 
a  single  man,  he  cleared  all  the  country  he  got  within 
his  grasp,  of  that  numerous  and  respectable  class  of  inde¬ 
pendent  cultivators  hitherto  so  happy  in  their  mediocrity. 
Where  thousands  of  free  citizens  had  formerly  been  found 
ready  to  defend  the  soil  they  tilled  with  their  own  hands, 
nothing  was  to  be  seen  but  slaves.  Even  this  miserable 
population  rapidly  diminished,  because  its  labor  was 
found  too  expensive,  and  the  proprietor  found  it  answer 
better  to  turn  his  land  to  pasture.  The  fertile  fields  of 
Italy  ceased  to  supply  food  for  their  inhabitants.  The 
provisioning  of  Borne  depended  on  fleets,  which  brought 
corn  from  Sicily,  from  Egypt,  and  from  Africa ;  from  the 
capital  to  the  uttermost  provinces  depopulation  followed 
in  the  train  of  overgrown  wealth;  and  it  was  in  the  midst  of 
this  universal  prosperity,  before  a  single  barbarian  had 
crossed  the  frontiers  of  the  empire,  that  the  difficulty  of 
recruiting  the  legions  began  to  be  felt.  .  .  .  The  levies  of 
troops  were  no  longer  made  in  Borne.  They  were  made, 

*  “  Agrum  male  colere  censorium  probrum  dicebatur.” — Cato, 
“Priscus  de  Re  Rustica.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


227 


almost  exclusively,  in  northern  Gaul  and  along  the  right 
bank  of  the  Danube. .  .  .  This  border  country  had  offered 
little  temptation  to  the  cupidity  of  Roman  senators. 
They  cared  not  to  have  their  property  in  a  province 
constantly  harassed  by  the  enemy.  The  land  which  the 
senators  would  not  buy  remained  in  the  possession  of  the 
old  proprietors.  There,  consequently,  a  population 
numerous,  free,  and  hardy,  still  maintained  itself.  It 
long  furnished  the  army  with  soldiers  ;  it  soon  supplied 
it  with  chiefs.”*  And  to  this  depth  of  degradation  had 
the  empress  city  of  the  world  fallen,  by  these  fatal  causes 
which  are  working  such  mischief  at  this  moment  in 
Ireland — the  “ clearances”  of  estates,  the  consolida¬ 
tion  of  farms,  the  accumulation  of  money  and  land  in  the 
hands  of  a  few,  and  the  consequent  disappearance  of  the 
people. 

In  Italy  these  causes  reached  the  climax  of  their 
mischief-making  on  the  final  triumph  of  Augustus. 
The  story  is  told  by  Goldsmith,  in  his  own  simple, 
inimitable  way :  “  While  he  (Antony)  remained  thus 
idle  in  Egypt,  Augustus,  who  took  upon  him  to  lead 
back  the  veteran  troops,  and  settle  them  in  Italy ,  was 
assiduously  employed  in  providing  for  their  subsistence. 
He  had  promised  them  lands  at  home  as  recompense  for 
their  past  services ;  but  they  could  not  receive  their  new 
grants  without  turning  out  the  former  inhabitants.  In 
consequence  of  this,  multitudes  of  women,  with  their 
children  in  their  arms,  whose  tender  years  and  innocence 
excited  universal  compassion,  daily  filled  the  temples 

and  the  streets  with  their  distresses.  Numbers  of 

» 

husbandmen  and  shepherds  came  to  deprecate  the  con¬ 
queror’s  intention,  or  to  obtain  an  habitation  in  some 
other  part  of  the  world.  Among  this  number  was 


*  “Lit.  of  Europe,”  vol.  i.  p.  345. 


228 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Virgil,  the  poet  (to  whom  mankind  owes  more  obligations 
than  to  a  thousand  conquerors),  who,  in  a  humble  manner, 
begged  permission  to  retain  his  patrimonial  farm.  Virgil 
obtained  his  request;  but  the  rest  of  his  countrymen  of 
Mantua  and  Cremona  were  turned  out  without  mercy-.”* 
A.  counterpart,  to  the  letter,  of  scenes  so  often  enacted  in 
this  unhappy  island ;  but  in  one  respect  less  harrowing 
than  the  latest  system  of  Irish  clearances,  in  which  man 
is  “  turned  out  without  mercy,”  and  not  man,  but  brute 
beast,  substituted  in  his  stead. 

These  inhuman  clearances  were,  in  Rome,  the  fore¬ 
runner  of  her  fall.  What  do  they  presage  to-day  for  the 
mistress  of  Ireland!  Is  England,  like  Rome,  to  perish  by 
her  own  handicraft!  Again,  as  in  Judea  : — 

“  Nec  lex  jnstior  ulla  unquain  fuit, 

Quam  artifices  necis  arte  perire  sua.” 

“  No  law  more  just  than  that  the  murderer  should 
perish  by  his  own  craft.” 

How  pathetically  does  Virgil  bewail  those  Roman 
clearances  in  his  first  bucolic,  and  how  illustrative  of  the 
Irish  exterminations  of  modern  days  ! — 

“  Nos  patriae  fines  et  dulcia  linquimus  ana, 

Nos  patriam  fugimus.”+ 

“We  quit  our  country’s  limits  and  pleasant  fields;  we 
have  to  fly  our  native  land,”  while  the  stranger  enjoys 
our  all.  And  how  feelingly  does  one  of  the  disinherited 
congratulate  the  poet  himself  on  his  better  fortune,  in 
being  left  his  “little  bit  of  ground”: — 

i 

“  Fortunate  senex  !  ergo  tua  rura  manebunt, 

Et  tibi  magna  satis.” 

*  “Roman  History,”  pp.  215-16.  Bordeaux. 

1 1.  “Bucol.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


229 


“  Fortunate  old  man  !  then  your  fields  remain  to  you — 
quite  enough  for  your  wants.”  Which  shows  what  value 
was  set  on  the  little  patch  in  Italy  two  thousand  years 
ago — that  patch,  small  though  it  might  be,  being  “  quite 
enough  for  its  owner’s  wants.” 

Horace  thus  depicts  the  altered  circumstances  of  an 
evicted  Italian  of  the  Augustan  era  : — 

‘  ‘  Videas  raetato  in  agello, 

Cum  pecore  et  quatis,  fortem  mercede  colcuram.”* 

“  There  was  the  industrious  occupier  and  owner  yesteu 
day,  earning  his  bread  to-day  in  his  confiscated  land.” 
A  perfect  parallel  to  the  husbandman  of  Ireland. 

Elsewhere,  himself  an  eye-witness  of  the  clearances 
described  above,  he  represents  the  “  disinherited  ”  as — 

“  Agricolse  prisci,  fortes,  parvoque  beati,” 

“The  olden,  brave  husbandman,  content  with  little.” 
And  he,  too,  clearly  intimates  his  predilection  for  a  “little 
bit  of  land  ” — that  ALL  of  an  Irish  peasant : — 

“  Hoc  erat  in  votis  ;  modus  agri  non  ita  magnus, 

Hortus  ubi  et  tecto  vicinus  jugis  aquae  fons, 

Et  paulum  sylvae  ....  Nihil  amplius  oro, 

Maia  vate,  nisi  ut  propria  liaec  mihi  munera  faxis.” 

His  supreme  wish  was  only  “  a  little  bit  of  land,  a 
garden,  a  spring  well  near  the  house,  with  some  little 
plantation,”  nothing  more,  only — security  of  tenure — “  that 
these  things  be  made  his  own”  So  that  the  land,  and  garden, 
and  house,  and  well,  and  wood,  were  nothing  unless  made 
permanent  to  the  poet  philosopher.  He  only  wrote  the 
language  of  nature. 

In  reference  to  the  mania  which  in  his  time  raged  for 
latifundism,  he  philosophically  remarks  : — 


*  “  Satir.”  ii.,  lib.  2. 


230 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


u  Tel  die,  quid  referat  intra, 

Naturae  fines  viventi,  jugera  centum,  an 
Mille  arat.”* 

“  What  matters  it  to  a  man  living  as  nature  prescribes, 
whether  he  plough  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  acres  3”  which 
he,  with  no  less  common  sense,  expresses  in  the  general 
maxim : — 

“  Est  modus  in  rebus  :  sunt  certi  denique  fines, 

Quos  ultra  citraque  nequit  consistere  rectum.”! 

“  There  is  a  measure  in  all  things ;  there  are  certain 
limits  at  last,  within  and  beyond  which  right  cannot  sub¬ 
sist.”  But  in  his 

j 

“  Ager  qui  te  pascit  tuns  est” — 

“  The  field  that  feeds  you  is  (should  be)  your  own” — he 
lays  down  the  fundamental  maxim,  now  happily  obtain¬ 
ing  throughout  the  world,  with  the  one  exception  of 
Ireland.  Were  Irish  landlords  to  allow  their  tenant 
serfs  leave  to  live  on  such  a  principle,  they  would  not 
be  so  like  the  latifundists  of  olden  Borne,  whose  terror 
of  their  slaves  the  sage  poet  suggests  in  the  following 
words  : — 

“  An  vigilare  metu  exanimem  noctesque  diesque 
Formidare  malos  fures,  incendia,  servos 
Ne  te  compilent  fugientes :  Hoc  juvat  ?”+ 

“  Where  is  the  pleasure  of  watching  thieves,  fire,  and 
slaves,  day  and  night,  lest  they  should  plunder  you  and 
make  away  ?  ”  To  which  he  substantially  adds  of  him¬ 
self — “  From  such  possessions  may  the  gods  protect 
me.” 

Be  it  borne  in  mind  all  this  was  written  when  slave- 


*  “  Satir.”  i.,  1. 1. 


t  [bid. 


t  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


231 


work  had  become  an  institution,  in  place  of  the  previous 
cultivation  of  the  earth  by  the  hands  that  captured  the 
slave. 

Slave-work  has  been  an  institution  in  Ireland  since 
Anglo-Irish  landlordism  began. 

The  Irish  tenant-at-will,  or  rather,  in  the  words  of  Sir 
W.  Petty,  “  tenant  at  villeinage,”  is  a  very  serf.  “  The 
land  which  feeds  ”  (not  him,  but)  his  idle  “  master”  is  not 
“  his  own.”  His  “  bit  of  land  ”  is  not  made  permanent 
to  him.  The  man  who  (his  ancestors  having  first  ob¬ 
tained  it  by  virtue  of  confiscation  and  butchery)  calls  it 
•“  his  own,”  brings  nothing  to  it  by  his  industry,  extracts 
nothing  out  of  it,  and  yet  feeds  on  its  fat,  as  if  the 
Almighty  meant  not  merely  its  natural  and  unlabored 
productions,  but  even  the  fruit  of  the  industry  of 
thousands,  for  him  alone  !  !  ! 

Well,  large  farms,  consolidation,  depopulation, “  ruined 
Italy.”  May  the  same  causes  operating  in  Ireland  not  have 
the  same  effect  on  England  in  their  proper  time  % 


232 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  XV. 

IRISH  CLEARANCES. 


“One  such  act  suffices  to  make  a  human  monster— a  multitude  of  them,  a 
political  economist." — “  Ireland ,  its  Evils  and  their  Remedies"  by  M.  T.  Sadleir, 
c.  viii.  p.  142,  ed.  1827. 


By  far  tlie  most  heart-rending  chapter  of  modern  Irish 
history  is  that  on  evictions,  consolidation  of  farms,  and 
their  effects.  Their  only  parallel — if,  indeed,  they  can 
be  paralleled  at  all — is  found  in  those  Augustan  and 
other  exterminations  in  Italy  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
just  referred  to,  and  the  “  enclosure”  system  of  England, 
already  reviewed,  in  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  part  of 
the  seventeenth  centuries.  We  have  already  seen  the  evi¬ 
dence  of  Swift  and  others  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the 
“  clearance”  system  was  carried  out  in  their  day,  and 
its  baneful  and  deplorable  consequences. 

Previous  to  the  inauguration  of  this  inhuman  policy 
of  the  extermination  of  a  people  and  the  substitution  of 
the  beast  in  their  stead,  Ireland  was  in  a  state  of  pros¬ 
perity  that  might  be  envied  by  any  nation  on  earth. 
“  A  most  rich  and  populous  country,”*  as  she  was  in 
the  days  of  Elizabeth,  and  before  her  people  were 
“brayed  as  in  a  mortar”  by  Mountjoy.  “Populous, 
well-inhabited,  and  rich  in  all  the  good  blessings  of 
God,  being  plenteous  of  corne,  full  of  cattell,  well  stored 

*  Spenser’s  “  View,”  p.  1G5. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


233 


with  fish  and  sundrie  other  good  commodities,”* * * §  she 
had  not  completely  sunk  beneath  the  calamities  inflicted 
on  her  by  the  starvation  policy  of  that  wily  general ; 
but,  with  that  resiliency  peculiar  to  her  people,  recovered 
her  condition  so  rapidly,  on  the  restoration  of  peace, 
that  even  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  “  the  strings  of  the 
Irish  harp  were  all  in  tune.”f  The  people  “  sat  under 
their  own  vines,  and  the  whole  country  reaped  the 
happy  fruits  of  peace.”|  While,  for  the  condition  of  the 
country  half  a  century  afterwards,  we  have  the  authority 
of  Mr.  J.  H.  Hutchinson,  who  informs  us  that : — 

“  After  the  Restoration,  from  the  time  that  the  Acts 
of  Settlement  and  Explanation  had  been  fully  carried 
into  execution,  to  the  year  1688,  Ireland  made  great 
advances,  and  continued  for  several  years  in  a  most 
prosperous  condition.  Lands  were  everywhere  im¬ 
proved  ;  rents  were  doubled ;  the  kingdom  abounded ; 
trade  flourished  to  the  envy  of  our  neighbors.  Many 
places  in  the  kingdom  equalled  the  improvements  in 
England.  The  king’s  revenue  increased  equal  to  the 
advance  of  the  kingdom,  which  was  every  day  growing, 
and  ‘  was  well  established  in  plenty  and  wealth.  ’§ 
Manufactures  were  set  on  foot  in  divers  parts;  the 
meanest  inhabitants  were  at  once  enriched  and  civilized  ; 
and  this  kingdom  is  then  represented  to  be  1  the  most 
improved  and  improving  spot  of  ground  in  Europe.’  ” 
Which,  he  says,  “proves  the  melancholy  truth  that 
a  country  will  sooner  recover  from  the  miseries  and 
devastations  occasioned  by  war,  invasion,  rebellion,  and 
massacre,  than  from  laws  restraining  the  commerce,  dis- 

*  Hollingshead,  b.  vi.  p.  459. 

t  Davis,  “  Discovery,”  &c.,  p.  194. 

+  Archbishop  King,  “  State  of  the  Protestants  of  Ireland.” 

§  Words  of  Lord  Syduey,  speech  from  the  throne  in  1092. 

I.  C.  Jour.  v.  ii.  p.  577.  * 


234 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


couraging  the  manufactures,  fettering  the  industry,  and, 
above  all,  breaking  the  spirit  of  a  people.”* 

Such  was  Ireland  from  the  Restoration  to  the  Revolu¬ 
tion,  and  then,  indeed,  commenced  that  system  of  com¬ 
mercial,  industrial,  agricultural,  social,  religious,  and  poli¬ 
tical  oppression  which  bears  its  ripened  fruits  in  national 
misery  and  national  disaffection  to-day. 

Jealous  of  the  Irish  woollen  trade,  both  houses  of  the 
English  legislature  approached  his  revolutionary  majesty 
and  addressed  him  thus  : — 

“  Wherefore  we  most  humbly  beseech  your  most  sacred 
majesty,  that  your  majesty  would  be  pleased,  in  the  most 
public  and  effectual  way  that  may  be,  to  declare  to  all 
your  subjects  of  Ireland  that  the  growth  and  increase  of 
woollen  manufacture  there  hath  long  been,  and  will  ever 
be,  looked  upon  with  great  jealousy  by  all  your  subjects 
of  this  kingdom,  and,  if  not  timely  remedied,  may  occa¬ 
sion  very  strict  laws  to  prohibit  and  suppress  the  same 
to  which  considerate  demand  his  “  most  sacred  majesty  ” 
most  graciously  replied  that  “  he  would  do  all  that  in  him 
lay  to  discourage  the  woollen  manufactures  of  Ireland.” 

And  this  is  the  man  whom  Irishmen  (?)  are  found  to 
toast  as  of  “  glorious,  pious,  and  immortal  memory  ”  ! 

No  wonder  that,  in  reference  to  this  resolve,  and  its 
subsequent  execution,  as  to  others  of  a  similar  character, 
Grattan  should  have  thundered  to  an  Irish  senate : 
“  Do  not  tolerate  that  power  which  blasted  you  for  a  cen¬ 
tury  ;  that  power  which  shattered  your  looms,  banished 
your  manufactures,  dishonored  your  peerage,  and  stopped 
the  growth  of  your  people  ;  do  not,  I  say,  be  bribed  by 
an  export  of  woollen,  or  an  import  of  sugar,  and  permit 
that  power,  which  has  withered  the  land,  to’  remain  in 

*  “The  Commercial  Restraints  of  Ireland  considered.”  Dublin, 
1779. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


235 


your  country  and  have  existence  in  your  pusillanimity.”* 
This  was  spoken  in  reference  to  the  attempt  made  to 
blindfold  Ireland  in  arms  by  the  tardy  concession  of 
that  free  trade  in  woollen  fabrics  destroyed  by  the  revo¬ 
lutionary  king.  At  that  time  Ireland  demanded  and  ob¬ 
tained  something  more  than  she  seeks  for,  and  will  be 
now  refused — liberty.  “  The  king,”  said  he,  “  has  no 
other  title  to  his  crown  than  that  which  you  have  to  your 
liberty;  both  are  founded,  the  throne  and  your  freedom, 
upon  the  right  vested  in  the  subject  to  resist  by  arms,  not¬ 
withstanding  their  oath  of  allegiance,  any  authority 
attempting  to'  impose  acts  of  power  as  laws,  whether 
that  authority  be  one  man  or  a  host,  the  second  James 
or  the  British  parliament. 

u  Every  argument  for  the  house  of  Hanover  is  equally 
an  argument  for  the  liberties  of  Ireland;  the  Act  of 
Settlement  is  an  act  of  rebellion,  or  the  declaratory 
statute  of  6th  George  I.  an  act  of  usurpation ;  for 
both  cannot  be  law.”+ 

If  I  recal  the  memories  suggested  by  the  above  lan¬ 
guage,  it  is  to  show  how  the  whole  system  that  had  pre¬ 
vailed  since  the  Revolution  had  affected  the  Irish  heart  as 
throbbing  in  the  bosom  of  Grattan,  ninety  years  ago — 
that  system  (“ power”)  which,  among  its  other  excesses, 
had,  by  means  of  its  “  clearances,”  “  stopped  the  growth 
of  the  people.”  Were  any  man  in  Ireland  to  speak  to-day 
the  language  of  the  immortal  patriot  of ’82,  his  fate  were 
sealed,  as  is  that  of  Messrs.  O’Leary,  Luby,  O’Donovan 
Rossa,  and  General  Burke.  Such  is  our  progress  in  civil 
liberty  during  the  last  century — slavery,  gilded  with 
liberty’s  name. 

This  desolating  system  commenced  shortly  after  the 

*  Speech  on  Declaration  of  Irish  Rights,  April  19th,  1780. 

T  Ibid. 


236 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Revolution — that  “  glorious  Revolution,”  that  brought  to 
England  liberty,  but  chains  and  misery  to  Ireland.  Its 
early  horrors  have  been  already  partially  exposed  in  the 
pictures  drawn  by  Swift  and  others,  as  reproduced  in  the 
first  chapter.  In  the  present  we  shall  bring  our  exami¬ 
nation  of  the  evil  down  to  the  present  day,  -when  we 
shall  see  that  our  modern  territorial  Pharaohs  are  as 
despotic  in  commanding  “  bricks  to  be  made  without 
straw,”  and  as  decided  in  their  preference  for  the  beast 
to  the  man,  as  any  of  their  Elizabethian,  Cromwellian, 
or  Williamite  ancestors. 

Swift,  writing  in  or  about  1724,  said  :  “  The  exactions 
of  the  landlord  have  been  a  grievance  of  above  twenty 
years’  standing,”*  which  brings  them  back  to  the  days  of 
the  Revolution ;  and  constantly,  throughout  his  work, 
does  he  return,  again  and  again,  to  his  flagellation  of  the 
system  of  clearances,  no  less  insane  than  inhuman,  that 
prevailed  in  his  day.  Having  thus  furnished  us  with  an 
approximate  date  of  the  inauguration  of  the  fell  policy, 
he  tells  us  that :  “  These  cruel  landlords  are  every  day 
unpeopling  the  kingdom,  forbidding  their  miserable 
tenants  to  till  the  earth,  against  common  reason  and  jus¬ 
tice,  and  contrary  to  the  practice  and  prudence  of  all  other 
nations,  by  which  numberless  families  have  been  forced 
to  leave  the  kingdom,  or  stroll  about  and  increase  the 
number  of  our  thieves  and  beggars.”t  Again  he  says 
that,  “  As  to  the  improvement  of  the  land,  those  few 
who  attempt  that  ....  through  covetousness  .... 
by  running  into  the  fancy  of  grazings  after  the  manner  of 
the  Scythians,  are  every  day  depopulating  the  country. 
And  among  “  the  causes  of  any  country’s  flourishing,” 
the  seventh  he  sets  down  is  “  by  improvement  of  land, 

*  Letters  to  Freeman  and  Lafield. 

+  Sermon  on  the  causes  of  the  wretched  condition  of  Ireland. 

t  “  A  Short  View,”  vol.  ix.,  p.  203. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


237 


encouragement  of  agriculture,  and  thereby  increasing  the 
number  of  people,  without  which  any  country ,  however 
llessed  by  nature ,  must  continue  poor”*  Again,  describing 
the  condition  of  the  people,  he  says :  “  The  miserable 
dress  and  diet  and  dwelling  of  the  people ;  the  general 
desolation  in  most  parts  of  the  kingdom  ;  the  old  seats 
of  the  nobility  and  the  gentry  all  in  ruins,  and  no  new 
ones  in  their  stead ;  the  families  of  farmers  who  pay  great 
rents,  living  in  filth  and  nastiness,  upon  buttermilk  and 
potatoes,  without  a  shoe  or  a  stocking  to  their  feet,  or 
a  house  so  convenient  as  an  English  hogsty  to  receive 
them — these,  indeed,  may  be  comfortable  sights  to  an 
English  spectator,  who  comes  for  a  short  time,  only  to 
learn  the  language,  and  returns  back  to  his  own  country, 
whither  he  finds  all  our  wealth  transmitted. 

“ Nostra  miseria  magna  cs.  There  is  not  one  argument 
used  to  prove  the  riches  of  Ireland  which  is  not  a 
logical  demonstration  of  its  poverty.  .  .  .  The  rise  of 
OUR  RENTS  IS  SQUEEZED  OUT  OF  THE  VERY  BLOOD  AND 
VITALS  AND  CLOTHES  AND  DWELLINGS  OF  THE  TENANTS, 

WHO  LIVE  WORSE  THAN  ENGLISH  BEGGARS . ‘Ye 

are  idle,  ye  are  idle,’  answered  Pharaoh  to  the  Israelites, 
when  they  complained  to  his  majesty  that  they  were 
forced  to  make  bricks  without  straw.”+  Who  is  unaware 
of  the  Dean’s  “  Modest  Proposal  ”  to  clear  off  our  “  sur¬ 
plus  population”  by  bringing  100,000  infants  yearly  to 
the  shambles  as  the  most  dainty  viands  “  at  merry  meet¬ 
ings,  and  particularly  at  weddings  and  christenings  ”  ?  This 
one  “  remedy,”  he  says,  may  supersede  all  others,  and 
among  them  “  that  of  quitting  our  animosities  and  fac¬ 
tions,  nor  acting  any  longer  like  the  J ews,  who  were  mur¬ 
dering  one  another  at  the  very  moment  their  city  was 
taken that  “  of  being  a  little  cautious  not  to  sell  our 
country  and  conscience  for  nothing  /’  and  that  “  of  teach- 
*  “xY  Short  View,”  vol.  ix.,  p.  199.  f  Ibid.,  pp.  205-6-7. 


238 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ING  LANDLORDS  TO  HAVE  AT  LEAST  ONE  DEGREE  OF 

♦ 

MERCY  TOWARDS  THEIR  TENANTS.”  His  “  modest  pro 
posal”  would,  he  said,  if  adopted,  “  greatly  lessen  the 
number  of  Papists  with  whom  we  are  yearly  overrun, 
being  the  principal  breeders  of  the  nation,  as  well  as  our 
most  dangerous  enemies ;  who  stay  at  home  on  purpose  to 
deliver  the  kingdom  to  the  Pretender,  hoping  to  take  their 
advantage  by  the  absence  of  so  many  good  Protestants, 
who  have  chosen  rather  to  leave  their  country,  than  stay 
at  home  and  pay  their  tithes  against  their  conscience  to 
an  episcopal  curate.”* 

But  that  other  proposal  of  his,  in  answer  to  the 
“  Craftsman,’  ’  is  inimitable  for  its  drollery,  and  the 
mountain  of  ridicule  it  heaps  on  the  depopulators  and 
consolidators  of  his  day.  “  The  profitable  land,”  writes 
he,  “  of  this  kingdom  is,  I  think,  usually  computed  at 
seventeen  millions  (the  census  of  1841  makes  it  18,004,300 ; 
including  land  under  water  it  is  20,808,271  ;  total,  ex¬ 
clusive  of  water,  20,31 9, 927f),  all  of  which  I  propose 
to  turn  wholly  to  grazing.  Now,  it  is  found  by  expe¬ 
rience  that  one  grazier  and  his  family  can  manage  2,000 
acres.  Thus  16,800,000  acres  maybe  managed  by  8,600 
families ;  and  a  fraction  of  200,000  acres  will  be  more 
than  sufficient  for  cabins,  out-liouses,  and  potato-gardens- 
because  it  is  to  be  understood  that  corn  of  all  sorts  is 
to  be  sent  to  us  from  England. 

“  These  8,400  families  may  be  divided  among  the  four 
provinces,  according  to  the  number  of  houses  in  each 
province  ;  and,  making  the  equal  allowance  of  eight  to  a 
family,  the  number  of  inhabitants  will  amount  to  67,200 
souls.  To  these  we  are  to  add  a  standing  army  of  20,000 
English,  which,  together  with  their  trulls,  their  bastards, 
and  their  horse-boys,  will,  by  a  gross  computation,  very  near 


*  “A  Short  View,”  pp.  294-7. 


*  Kegistrar-General’s  Eeturns, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


239 


double  the  count,  and  be  very  sufficient  for  the  defence 
and  grazing  of  the  kingdom,  as  well  as  to  enrich  our 
neighbors,  expel  Popery,  and  keep  out  the  Pretender. 
And,  lest  the  army  should  be  at  a  loss  for  business,  I 
think  it  would  be  very  prudent  to  employ  them  in  col¬ 
lecting  the  publick  taxes  for  paying  themselves  and  the 
civil  list.  I  advise  that  all  our  owners  of  these  lands  should 
live  constantly  in  England,  in  order  to  learn  politeness 
and  qualify  themselves  for  employments  ;  but,  for  fear  of 
increasing  the  natives  in  this  island,  that  an  annual 
draught,  according  to  the  number  born  every  year,  be 
exported  to  whatever  place  will  bear  the  carriage,  or 
transplanted  to  the  English  dominions  on  the  American 
continent,  as  a  screen  between  his  majesty’s  English  sub¬ 
jects  and  the  savage  Indians.”*  The  fell  spirit  of  con¬ 
solidation  that  suggested  the  above  withering  satire  is 
as  rife  and  rank  this  day  as  it  was  one  hundred  and 
forty  years  ago.  A  goodly  number  were  11  transplanted 
to  his  majesty’s  dominions  on  the  continent  of  America,” 
and  their  deportation  resulted  in  the  loss  of  that  con¬ 
tinent  to  his  majesty.  In  other  words,  the  greed  of  Irish 
landlords  cost  England  the  richest  colonies  that  she  or 
any  other  country  ever  yet  possessed.  Take  care,  lest 
the  same  greed,  unchecked,  may  not  cost  her  yet  more — 
her  own  very  position  as  a  first-rate  nation.  What  Swift 
wrote  in  irony  and  ridicule  was  actually  carried  out  as 
state-craft.  Emigration  societies  were  formed ;  Malthu¬ 
sian  theories  prevailed ;  for  a  time  the  poor-houses  ot 
New  York  were  filled  with  the  “  deported”  Irish ;  until 
Nemesis  has  had  her  revenge,  and  the  sons  of  these  Irish, 
“  early  in  life  exiled,”  now  threaten  nothing  less  than 
disruption  to  the  nation  which  “  deported”  their  fathers. 

Speaking  more  seriously,  though  not  more  soberly,  or 

*  ‘‘Answer  to  the  Craftsman,”  vol.  ix.,  p.  337. 


240 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Christianly,  or  sensibly,  elsewhere  he  says  :  “  To  bestow 
the  whole  kingdom  on  beef  and  mutton,  and  thereby 
drive  out  half  the  people  who  should  eat  their  share, 
and  force  the  rest  to  send  as  far  as  Egypt  for  bread  to 
eat  with  it,  is  a  piece  of  economy  of  which  I  have  no 
comprehension.”*  And  what  man,  but  a  sheer,  blinded 
bigot,  could  comprehend  the  economy  of  such  a  system  % 
Yet,  governments  are  found  to  employ  mercenary  scribes 
to  write  it  up,  as  the  English  government  did  Mr. 
Montgomery  Martin,  some  thirty-six  yedrs  ago,  and  a 
more  celebrated  name,  Mr.  Malthus,  years  before. 

“  I  question,”  says  Mr.  M.  T.  Sadleir,  “  whether  the 
broad  eye  of  God  beholds  upon  the  face  of  the  earth 
a  greater  mass  of  misery  than  is  constantly  created  by 
these  *  clearances.’  Could  we  take  from  them  a  single 
case,  and  trace  its  history  from  the  expulsion  of  the 
unfortunate  wretch  from  his  native  home,  ‘  through  all 
his  wanderings  round  this  world  of  care,’  as  his  own 
beautiful  poet  expresses  it — driven  from  place  to  place, 
and  branded  as  a  fugitive  and  a  vagabond  everywhere, 
till  his  pilgrimage  in  search  of  employment  and  bread 
closes,  perhaps,  in  another  hemisphere,  amidst  strangers, 
who  ‘  give  him  a  little  bread  for  charity’ — I  am  per 
suaded  few  of  those  high-wrought  cases  of  fictitious 
distress,  which  occasionally  awake  our  ready  sympathies, 
could  approach  the  touching  reality  which  the  story 
would  present.”t  And  this  was  written  over  forty  years 
ago  ! 

Speaking  of  the  “scheme” — as  it  was,  like  the  pre¬ 
vious  one  of  emigration,  a  fixed  one  with  the  tyrant 
landlords  to  get'  rid  of  what  they  called  the  “  surplus,” 
they  themselves  being  the  real  “  surplus,”  as  ever 


*  “  Answer  to  a  Memorial,”  ibid.,  p.  212. 
f  “  Ireland  and  its  Evils,”  pp.  93  4. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  241 

devouring  the  produce  of  the  land  without  supplying  it 
with  any  equivalent — he  moralizes  as  follows  : — 

“  As  to  the  cruelty  of  this  scheme,  it  far  exceeds  the 
former  one.  In  order  duly  to  estimate  it,  we  must 
attend  for  a  moment  to  the  condition  in  which  the  little 
agricultural  tenant  is  placed.  Unlike,  all  others ,  what¬ 
ever  be  their  pursuits,  he  is  virtually  at  the  mercy  of 
one  individual,  the  landlord  ;  and,  if  that  fails  him,  he 
is  at  once  bereft  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  of  his 
daily  labor,  and  of  the  house  that  shelters  him  and  his 
family  (which,  if  he  be  an  Irish  tenant,  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred,  he  built  himself) — in  a  word , 
deprived  at  once  of  the  benefit  of  his  past  exertions  and  of 
his  future  hopes.  But  when  a  number  of  such  are 
*  cleared  ’  at  once  (to  adopt  the  significant  phrase  used 
in  the  Emigration  Committee,  and  which,  we  learn,  is 
now  the  true  patriotic  practice),  a  crowd,  comprised,  of 
course,  of  both  sexes  and  of  every  period  of  life,  from 
helpless  infancy  to  decrepit  age,  including  those  in  the 
prime  of  their  days,  to  whom,  however,  health  and 
youth  are  of  no  avail,  for  there  is  no  employment  to  be 
obtained,  nor  any  refuge  or  relief  to  be  found  for  the 
wanderers;  I  question  whether  the  broad  eye  of  God 
beholds  upon  the  face  of  the  earth  a  greater  mass  of 
misery  than  is  constantly  created  by  these  clearances. 
...  As  to  the  prime  promoters  of  and  actors  in  such 
proceedings,  who  glory  in  their  shame,  no  language  can 
sufficiently  express  the  turpitude  of  their  conduct :  I 
am  persuaded  none  can  reach  their  feelings ;  otherwise 
I  would  attempt  to  bring  before  their  recollection  the 
numerous  train  of  victims  they  have  already  sacrificed 
to  their  selfishness ;  the  happiness  they  have  destroyed 
(for  they  are  not  uninformed  that  happiness  may  reside 
in  a  cottage,  and  even  preside  over  the  potato  meal,  to 
which  their  rapacity  has  reduced  the  inmates) ;  the 

Q 


242 


THE  IllISH  LANDLORD 


misery  they  have  created ;  the  premature  deaths  that 
have  ensued,  touching  which  it  is  for  God  to  decide 
whether  they  will  be  held  guiltless.  I  might  summon 
from  the  grave,  as  witnesses  against  them  and  their 
system,  those  who  either  in  the  old  world  or  the  ne\y  have 
found  that  their  sole  refuge  against  both  ;  nay,  that  the 
sea  might  yield  up  its  dead,  the  multitudes  of  such 
who  have  expired  by  the  sufferings  of  their  passage  in 
escaping  oppression,  by  the  hardships  they  had  after¬ 
wards  to  encounter.  But  no  !  with  these  ‘  the  tyranny 
is  overpast.’  Let,  then,  the  surviving,  and  far  more 
pitiable  victims  of  their  policy,  pass  in  melancholy  array 
before  them,  the  wrecks  of  human  happiness,  unutter¬ 
ably  miserable  in  appearance  and  reality,  whose  suffer¬ 
ings  everywhere  excite  the  commiseration  of  strangers. 
Let  these 

‘  Come  like  shadows,  and  depart, 

Show  their  eyes,  and  grieve  the  heart !’ 

But  their  eyes  are,  perhaps,  in  the  ends  of  the  earth ; 
and  as  to  grieving  their  heart,”  &c.*  And,  after  another 
scene  of  extermination,  he  says  of  the  victim :  “  Wherever 
he  may  be  at  this  moment,  I  had  rather  be  he  than  his 
oppressor.  One  such  act  suffices  to  make  a  human  monster 

— a  multitude  of  them,  a  political  economist . Yet 

Brutus  is  an  honorable  man;  so  are  they  all,  all  honorable 
men !”+  He  then  quotes  Paley,  who  says  that  “  the 
establishment  of  families”  is  “  one  of  the  noblest  pur¬ 
poses  to  which  the  rich  and  great  can  convert  their 
endeavors,  by  building  (not  destroying)  cottages,  and 
splitting  (not  engrossing)  farms.”^ 

Paley's  maxim,  however,  has  been  daily  reversed  in 

*  “  Ireland :  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies,”  pp.  139-40. 

t  Ibid.  p.  142.  t  Ibid.  93,  143. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


213 


Ireland  for  generations  past,  but  more  especially  within 
the  last  twenty-one  years.  Had  Sadleir  lived  within 
that  period,  and  to  write  about  all  the  horrors  of  the 
extermination  system,  never,  never  to  be  fully  revealed 
until  the  great  counting  day  before  landlord  and  victim, 
how  would  he  not  wither  the  “  human  monster”  with  his 
most  scorching  censure1?  Had  he  read  of  the  horrors 
revealed  in  the  following  statements,  in  what  language 
would  he  not  denounce  the  fiendish  system,  not  alone 
tolerated,  but  sanctioned  by  law  in  a  Christian  country  ? 
I  quote  from  the  Monthly  Chronicle  of  September,  1840 : — 
“The  process  of  extermination,  as  we  have  seen,  com¬ 
menced  after  the  conclusion  of  the  war  (in  1690,  as  we 
have  already  seen;  vigorously  in  1709,  according  to  Dean 
Swift),  but  was  infinitely  aggravated  by  the  passing  of  the 
Emancipation  Act,  in  1829,  after  which  ‘  the  gentlemen 
began  to  clear  their  estates  of  the  forty-shilling  freeholders 
who  hod  been  clone ,  aivay  with  by  the  ad.’*  For,  notwith¬ 
standing  the  depression  produced  by  the  peace,  and 
notwithstanding  the  theories  of  consolidation,  increased 
produce,  and  surplus  population,  the  wretched  serfs  who 
still  possessed  the  power  to  vote  according  to  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  their  lords  at  a  county  election,  were  allowed  to 
linger  in  possession  of  their  little  holdings,  and  the 
imagined  loss  which  resulted  from  suspending  the  exter¬ 
minating  system,  was  compensated  by  the  patronage 
derived  from  political  importance.  ‘  All,’  says  Mr. 
Bicheno,  ‘  that  the  landlord  looks  at  in  Ireland  is  the 
quantity  of  rent  which  he  can  abstract  from  the  tenant. 
He,  therefore,  encourages  a  redundant  population  until 
the  rents  are  no  longer  raised  by  competition.  Upon  arriving 
at  that  point  the  rents  are  diminished,  and  then  he  has 

*  Evidence  of  Lord  Donoughmore  before  the  Roden  Com¬ 
mittee,  No.  1,277. 


244 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


an  inducement  to  clear  the  land  and  increase  ti  e 
extent  of  the  holdings.’* 

“  This  consideration  of  increasing  rent  operated  from 
1793  to  1815,  in  conjunction  with  the  political  import¬ 
ance  derived  from  the  number  of  freeholders.  But  the 
population  at  the  close  of  the  war  had,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  landlords,  arrived  at  the  point  where  the  rents  begin 
to  diminish.  The  people  were  still,  however,  until  1829, 
worth  keeping  in  existence  for  the  purpose  of  the  hust¬ 
ings,  but  as  soon  as  they  were  deprived  of  the  elective 
franchise,  by  the  Emancipation  Act,  the  only  remaining 
barrier  between  them  and  destruction  was  removed, 
and  they  were  swept  out  with  as  little  compunction  as 
extensive  devastation. 

“The  only  returns  upon  this  subject  to  which  we  can 
conveniently  refer  at  this  instant  are  those  given  in  the 
Appendix  H.  to  the  report  on  the  Poor  Inquiry,  pp.  11,12. 
From  these  it  appears  that,  in  the  six  years  previous  to 
1833,  ejectment  processes  were  entered  in  seventeen 
counties  against  tliirty-one  thousand  and  odd  defendants ;  if 
we  assume  that  each  of  these  defendants  represented  a 
family  of  six  persons,  making  altogether  an  hundred  and 
eighty-six  thousand ;  and,  recollect,  that  these  counties 
with  the  exception  of  the  county  of  Cork,  were  the  smallest 
counties  in  Ireland ;  we  shall  have  a  tolerable  notion  of 
the  extent  to  which  this  system  of  depopulation  is  carried. 
No  returns  had  been  made  from  Leitrim,  Roscommon, 
Dublin,  Kildare,  Westmeath,  Wexford,  Kerry,  Limerick, 
Tipperary,  Waterford,  Antrim,  Armagh,  and  Tyrone,  and 
the  number  of  defendants  for  Galway  and  Wicklow  were 
not  given.  With  regard,  however,  to  the  county  of 
Tipperary,  which  forms  so  prominent  an  object  in  every 
inquiry  of  this  nature,  we  have,  from  the  testimony 


*  Evidence,  House  of  Commons,  1830. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


245 


given  before  the  Roden  committee,  sufficient  evidence 
to  show  the  real  state  of  the  case.  When  the  Tipperary 
landlords  requested  Lord  Mulgrave  to  favor  them  with 
larger  means  than  they  actually  possessed  for  extermi¬ 
nating  their  own  tenantry,  with  less  trouble  and  more 
security  to  the  perpetrators,  the  Lord  Lieutenant  di¬ 
rected  Mr.  Drummond  to  return  that  celebrated  answer 
to  which  we  have  already  adverted  in  our  number  for 
July.  The  letter  is  in  No.  12,027  of  the  original  evidence, 
and  in  page  86  of  the  Digested  Abstract  published  by 
the  Messrs.  Longman.  The  letter  alleged  that  the 
wholesale  expulsion  of  cottier  tenants  in  Tipperary  was 
the  principal  cause  of  the  disturbances  in  that  county. 
This  proposition  involves  two  statements  :  first,  that 
there  was  a  wholesale  expulsion  of  tenants,  and  secondly, 
that  such  expulsion  was  the  cause  of  the  outrages  that 
occurred.  To  disprove  the  statement  of  Mr.  Drum¬ 
mond,  Lord  Donoughmore,  the  lord  lieutenant  of  the 
county,  was  called,  and  he,  *  swearing  by  the  card,’  stated 
plumply  that  the  assertion  of  Mr.  Drummond  concerning 
the  wholesale  expulsion  was  false.  Mr.  Howley,  tjie 
Chairman  or  Assistant  Barrister  of  the  county,  was 
called  to  support  the  statement  of  Mr.  Drummond,  and 
he  said  that  he  was  ready  to  mention  the  names  of  the  persons 
to  whom  the  wholesale  expulsion  was  attributed.  The 
committee  refused  to  hear  the  statement,  and  directed 
him  to  withdraw,  and  upon  his  return  refused  to  allow 
the  question  to  be  repeated.  In  answer  to  other  questions 
he  says  (No.  9,991-2),  that  from  conferences  which  he  had 
with  the  other  assistant  barristers,  he  found  that  eject¬ 
ments  at  sessions  were  more  numerous  in  Tipperary  than  in 
any  oilier  county ,  and  that  he  himself  has  had  more  than 
150  of  them  at  one  quarter  sessions ;  the  150  defendants 
representing  about  900  individuals.  He  adds  (9,974), 
that  a  great  many  other  ejectments  were  also  brought  before 


246 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  superior  courts  ;  but  how  many  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  known.  Lord  Donoughmore  himself  states  (12,073; 
Abstract,  p.  8),  that  ‘ many  landlords  in  Tipperary  have  been 
ejecting  their  tenants  for  the  last  nine  or  ten  years  f  and  (ibid.) 
that  ‘the  gentlemen  began  clearing  their  estates  of  the  forty 
shilling  freeholders  when  they  had  been  done  away  withby  the 
Emancipation  Act.’  His  lordship  denies  in  terms  that  the 
expulsion  of  the  tenantry  by  the  landlords  was  wholesale . 
We  know  not  what  meaning  Mr.  Drummond  and  Lord 
Donoughmore  may  have  severally  annexed  in  their  own 
minds  to  this  term,  neither  do  we  know,  nor,  as  we  be¬ 
lieve,  does  any  one  else  know  very  exactly  what  precise 
meaning  it  ought  to  bear  in  the  case.  But  even  supposing 
that  there  is  some  inaccuracy  in  the  use  of  the  word,  and 
that  the  Tipperary  gentlemen  are  not  rightly  designated 
as  ‘  wholesale  ’  exterminators,  we  think  that  from  the 
evidence  of  Lord  Donoughmore  himself  it  is  perfectly 
clear,  that  they  do  a  very  considerable  amount  of  business 
in  the  retail  department.  A.  tolerably  accurate  idea 
may  be  formed  in  other  ways  of  the  extent  of  the  pro¬ 
ceedings.” 

And  he  then  furnishes  us  with  the  testimony  of  Mr. 
Kemmis,  which  will  be  found  in  the  subsequent  chapter. 
He  pursues : — 

“  The  following  are  a  few  instances  of  the  cause  and  of 
the  effect  in  other  counties  : — 

“The  Eev.  Michael  Keogh  states  that  114  families 
were  ejected  by  one  landlord,  Mr.  Crosby.*  Mr. 
Cahill,  civil  engineer,  mentions  1,126  persons  as  being 
evicted  in  another  place.!  A  great  many  of  them  died 
of  hunger.  % 

“  ‘  On  Mr.  Cassan’s  estate  a  great  many  were  ejected. 
On  Mr.  Johnson’s  estate  thirty-four  families.  Dr.  Doxay 


*  Lewis,  SO. 


t  Lewis,  84. 


Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


247 


ejected  a  few.  Mr.  Roe  ejected  some,  as  did  many  others 
whom  I  don’t  recollect.  They  scattered  themselves 
throughout  the  county,  carrying  discontent  wherever  they 
went.  I  am  convinced  that  this  was  the  cause  of  the 
disturbances.  They  first  began  upon  Mr.  Corby's  estate.’* 
“  We  don’t  exactly  know  the  situation  of  these  pro¬ 
perties — they  probably  were  in  the  Queen’s  County. 
Of  the  disturbances  in  that  county  Mr.  Robert  Cassidy 
says,  in  his  evidence,  “  They  were  caused  by  the  ejection  of 
the  tenants ,  and  the  generally  oppressive  conduct  of  the 
persons  to  whom  the  laboring  classes  have  been  sub¬ 
ject,”  &c.  An  operation  of  the  same  kind  is  described 
by  Mr.  Blackburne  in  the  following  words  :  ‘  Lord 

Stradbrook’s  agent,  attended  by  the  sheriff  and  several 
to  assist  him,  went  upon  the  lands  and  dispossessed  his 
numerous  body  of  occupants.  They  prostrated  the  houses. 
The  number  of  persons  thus  deprived  of  their  homes  was  very 
large.  I  am  sure  they  were  above  forty  families  ;  persons 
of  all  ages  and  sexes,  and,  in  particular ,  A  woman  in 
the  extremity  or  death. ’f  The  agent  here  mentioned 
was  the  Mr.  Blood  who  was  subsequently  murdered. 
We  can  go  no  farther  in  the  production  of  individual 
instances,  of  which  the  details  are  so  horribly  revolting. 
The  extent  to  which  the  practice  goes  on  at  present  may, 
in  the  absence  of  returns,  be  inferred  from  the  following 
extract  of  a  speech  delivered  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  in  the  very  last  session,  upon  the 
occasion  of  Mr.  Smith  O’Brien’s  motion  for  a  grant  of 
public  money  to  assist  the  ejected  tenantry  to  emigrate 
to  other  countries  : — 

“  ‘It  might  be  correct,  according  to  the  principles  of  poli¬ 
tical  economy,  to  remove  the  people  from  their  small  hold¬ 
ings, in  order  to  throw  their  possessions  into  one  large  farm. 


*  House  of  Commons,  1S32. 


t  Ibid.,  79. 


248 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  ‘  The  giving  notice  to  Ninety  or  One  Hundred 
Families  to  quit  their  possessions,  and  then  turning 
them  loose  upon  the  world,  might  be  the  means  of  insuring 
better  management  of  gentlemen's  estates,  and  might  be  true 
according  to  the  principles  of  political  economy ;  but  it 
was  not  true,  according  to  the  dictates  of  moral  principle 
and  Christian  duty,  that  the  landlords  were  under 
no  obligation  to  provide  a  settlement  elsewhere 
for  those  whom  they  had  driven  from  their  homes,  and  thrust 
loose  upon  the  world 

“  The  committee  of  1830  state,  in  their  first  report 
(p.  8),  that  the  condition  of  the  tenantry  who  are  ejected  in 
order  to  promote  the  consolidation  of  farms,  is  most  deplorable. 
It  would  be  impossible  for  language  to  convey  an 
idea  of  the  state  of  distress  to  which  they  have  been  reduced, 
or  of  the  disease,  misery,  and  vice  which  they  have 
propagated  in  the  toivns  where  they  have  settled.  They 
are  obliged  to  resort  to  theft,  and  all  manner  of  vice  and 
iniquity,  to  procure  a  subsistence,  and  A  VAST  NUMBER  OF 
them  perish  of  want,!  after  having  undergone,  as  is 
stated  in  the  report  (p.  4),  misery  and  suffering  such  as  no 
language  can  describe,  and  of  which  no  conception  can  be 
formed,  without  actually  beholding  it ;  misery  and  suffer¬ 
ing,  the  remembrance  of  which  prevented  Van  Ramer 
from  going  to  sleep  even  after  his  departure  from 
Ireland,  and  which  compelled  Mr.  Cur  wen  to  declare 
that  1  all  the  waters  of  oblivion  could  never  wash  out 
the  traces  which  the  scenes  of  woe  that  he  had  witnessed 
in  Ireland  had  impressed  upon  his  mind.’J 

“Such  is  the  prospect  which  the  Irish  tenant  has  upon 
ejectment.  What,  then,  is  he  to  do  in  so  terrible  a 
conjuncture  1  Let  us  hear  the  indignant  eloquence  of  the 
late  learned,  upright,  and  independent  Judge  Fletcher, 

*  Morning  Chronicle,  June  16,  1840.  f  ET.  C.,  1830. 

X  “Observations,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  255. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


249 


upon  an  occasion  when  one  of  those  wretches  was  brought 
before  him  to  be  tried  for  some  outrage  committed  in 
defence  of  his  own  and  his  family’s  lives.” 

(This  extract  I  shall  furnish  in  the  following  chapter.) 

“ £  The  principle  of  dispeopling  estates,’  says  Mr. 
Baron  Foster,  ‘  is  going  on  in  Ireland  where  it  can  be 
effected.  If  your  lordships  ask  me  what  becomes  of  the 
surplus  stock  of  population ,  it  is  a  matter  upon  which  I 
have,  in  my  late  journeys  through  Ireland,  ENDEAVORED 
TO  FORM  AN  opinion,  and  conceive  that  they  wander 
about  the  country  as  mere  mendicants,  but  that,  more 
frequently,  they  betake  themselves  to  the  nearest  large 
towns,  and  there  occupy  the  most  wretched  hovels,  in 
the  most  miserable  outlets,  in  the  vain  hope  of  getting, 
occasionally,  a  day’s  work.  Though  this  expectation  is 
too  often  unfounded,  it  is  the  only  course  possible  for 
them  to  take.  Their  resort  to  these  towns  produces 
such  misery  as  it  is  impossible  to  describe.’* 

“Was  there  ever  in  the  world,”  continues  the  humane 
reviewer,  “  such  a  state  of  things  ?  The  dispeopling  of 
estates  is  going  on  wherever  it  can  be  effected ! — that  is  to 
say,  the  people,  who  have  committed  no  offence  except 
that  of  coming  into  existence  at  the  command  of  nature, 
ARE  PUT  TO  DEATH  WHEREVER  IT  CAN  BE  DONE — 
obliged,  in  the  language  of  a  committee  of  the  legislature, 
already  quoted,  £  to  die  of  want  /’  And  the  functionary 
who  made  this  statement — one  of  the  Queen’s  judges — 
a  man  deeply  imbued  in  the  statistics  of  Ireland,  who 
has  been,  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  employed  in 
different  public  capacities,  which  afforded  him  the  best 
means  of  becoming  acquainted  with  the  state  of  the 
population — this  man,  so  circumstanced,  does  not  know 
HOW  or  where  the  ejected  population  perishes.  He  has 

*  Evid.  before  Lords’  Committee,  1825. 


250 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


been  endeavoring  to  form  an  opinion  as  to  the  situation 
of  the  national  morgue  ;  and,  at  last,  he  conceives  tliat 
they  perish  principally  in  the  towns,  after  having  suffered 
‘such  misery  as  it  is  impossible  to  describe.’  ”* 

“  The  following  statement  is  one  of  the  latest  that 
has  been  made  upon  the  subject,  and  proceeds  from  Mr. 
Smith  O’Brien,  who,  being  a  landlord  and  a  country  gen¬ 
tleman  himself,  cannot  be  suspected  of  any  want  of 
sympathy  with  the  order  to  which  he  belongs  : — 

“  1  We  know,  also,  that,  of  late  years,  a  very  extensive 
system  of  ejectment  has  prevailed  in  Ireland,  in  order 
to  effect  the  consolidation  of  farms  for  the  general  im¬ 
provement  of  estates.  In  the  great  majority  of  cases,  I 
fear  that  such  ejectment  has  been  wholly  unaccom¬ 
panied'  by  any  concurrent  provision  for  the 
ejected  cottier.  Nothing  can  be  conceived  more  truly 
deplorable  than  the  condition  of  a  person  so  ejected. 
From  having  been  the  occupier  of  a  few  acres  of  land, 
for  which  he  has  often  paid  his  rent  with  the  utmost  punc¬ 
tuality,  he  now  becomes  a  forlorn  outcast,  unable  even  to 
procure  employment,  much  less  to  regain  the  occupation 
of  land.  Is  it  surprising  that  a  population  in 

SUCH  A  STATE  SHOULD  BE  OCCASIONALLY  TEMPTED  TO 
COMMIT  ACTS  OE  violence  ?  What  sympathy  can  they 
feel  with  the  possessors  of  property?  What  to  them 
are  the  advantages  of  law  and  order  ?  Accordingly, 
we  find  that  they  are  often  stimulated  to  commit  wrong 
by  despair.’f 

“  A  Kerry  newspaper,  cited  in  the  Monthly  Chronicle 
of  August  31st,  lb 40,  states  that  one  landlord  in  that 
county  had  thrown  two  hundred  and  thirty-three  persons 
out  upon  the  road.  '  The  Dublin  Evening  Post ,  cited 

*  Monthly  Chronicle,  No.  xxxi.,  pp.  248-9. 

t  Speech,  H.  C.,  June  2,  1S40. 


SINCE  THE  INVOLUTION. 


251 


in  the  Times  of  the  same  date,  says  that  ‘  there  never . 
ivas  greater  suffering  in  that  country  than  exists  at  present , 
and  that  the  number  and  wretchedness  of  the  unem¬ 
ployed  and  destitute  were  constantly  augmenting’.’ 
The  Dublin  Pilot ,  quoted  in  the  Times  of  the  same  day, 
~says :  ‘  Hunger,  downright  hunger,  pervades  the 
masses  of  the  population,  who  are  driven  to  the  ditches 
to  live  upon  weeds,  or  rather  to  die  by  feeding  upon  them' 
Be  these  the  consequences  which  flow  from  the  exem¬ 
plary  performance  of  their  duties  by  the  landlords'? 
By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them.  1 A  righteous 
man,’  says  the  inspired  writer,  c  regards  the  life  of  even 
his  beast  but  the  Irish  landlords,  in  the  language  of 
Job,  cause  their  naked  (tenantry)  ‘  to  lodge  without 
clothing,  so  that  they  have  no  covering  in  the  cold,  and 
that  they  are  wet  with  the  showers  of  the  mountains, 
and  embrace  the  rock  for  want  of  a  shelter.’!  *  They 
take  away  the  sheaf  from  the  hungry — from  those  who 
make  oil  within  the  walls,  and  who  tread  their  wine¬ 
presses,  but  suffer  thirst  /j  who  fatten  their  bullocks,  but 
never  taste  beef ;  who  tend  their  wheat  crops,  but  never 
eat  bread;  who  till  their  potatoes,  but  are  obliged 
themselves  to  live  upon  weeds.  Such  are  the  landlords 
who  are  the  objects  of  the  Quarterly' s  panegyrics — 
landlords  who,  now  as  in  the  time  of  Swift,  ‘  sacrificed 
their  oldest  tenants  to  gain  a  penny  an  acre,’  and  who, 
upon  consideration  of  expediency  and  convenience  to 
themselves,  put  the  tenants  even  to  death  by  thousands ; 
who  take  advantage  of  the  deplorable  necessities  of  the 
population  to  extort  from  them  a  promise  of  rents  which 
the  whole  produce  of  the  land  is  frequently  insufficient  to  pay  ; 
and  who,  after  having,  under  so  diabolical  a  contract, 
extracted  the  last  farthing  which  was  attainable  by 


*  Proverbs,  xi.  10. 


t  Job,  xxiv.  7,  8.  t  Ibid.,  x.  11. 


252 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


‘  squeezing  the  cabins,  clothes,  blood,  and  vitals  of  the’ 
tenantry,  whom  they  devote  by  expulsion  to  starva¬ 
tion,  with  as  little  ceremony  and  as  little  remorse  as  a 
scullion  experiences  in  hunting  out  a  rambling  rat.”* 

Lengthy  as  is  the  foregoing  extract,  I  considered  it 
well  worth  reproduction,  as  furnishing  a  pretty  clear 
insight  into  the  system  of  clearances  as  carried  on  years 
before  the  exterminators  were  happy  to  find  an  apology 
in  the  great  famine  of  ’46,  and  the  consequent  inability 
of  many  to  meet  their  rents — rents,  as  we  shall  see  in 
a  subsequent  chapter,  the  most  disgracefully  ‘‘exorbi¬ 
tant”  ever  drained  from  the  vitals  of  man. 

Of  a  piece  with  it  is  the  following  from  the  news¬ 
paper  of  the  Anti-Corn-Law  League,  which  is  no  less 
deserving  of  perusal.  It  is  briefly  prefaced  as  follows, 
by  a  writer  in  the  Dublin  Review  ;  and  shows  fully  forth 
what  little  protection  an  ordinary  lease  is  under  a  grasp¬ 
ing  landlord : — 

“  A  series  of  letters  on  Ireland,”  writes  he,  “  are  now 
being  published  in  the  newspaper  of  the  Anti-Corn-Law 
League.  They  contain  terrible  facts,  as  to  the  conduct 
of  the  landlords  of  Ireland.  The  writer  of  this  article  has 
peculiar  means  of  knowing  that  the  matters  stated  in  the  ex¬ 
tracts  following  this,  are  not  only  facts,  but  facts  of  a  miti¬ 
gated  description,  as  compared  with  other  and  frequent  acts 
of  landlords  in  Ireland. 

“  ‘  CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH. 

“  ‘  Facts  of  a  “  disturbed  district.” — The  law  in  Ire¬ 
land. — The  violation  of  leases. — Specimen  cases. — P.  R. 
— W.  R. — M.  D. — M. — Extracts  of  letter  to  a  gentleman 
in  London,  &c.,  &c. 

“  ‘  In  different  parts  of  the  county  of  Kilkenny,  in 
*  Monthly  Chronicle,  No.  xxxii.  330*1. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


253 


several  directions  from  the  town,  there  were  what  is 
usually  called  “  disturbed  districts.”  In  one  place  a 
murder  had  been  committed,  and  in  several  others  there 
had  been  attempts  at  murder  :  at  all  events  there  had 
been  accusations  against  certain  parties  of  attempting  to 
murder ;  but  we  shall  see  by-and-by,  from  the  trials  at 
assizes,  and  from  other  evidence,  that  it  is  no  unusual 
thing  in  Ireland,  and  especially  in  a  “  disturbed  district,” 
to  get  up  accusations,  against  certain  parties,  of  attempted 
murder,  for  purposes  which,  when  we  come  to  the  facts, 
will  be  easily  understood. 

“  ‘  I  visited  several  of  these  localities,  but  as  the  causes 
of  disturbance  in  some  of  them  were  similar  to  what  I 
saw  in  Tipperary,  and  have  written  of  in  the  second 
chapter,*  I  shall  now  speak  of  a  locality  where  the  dis¬ 
turbances  arose  from  ejectments. 

“  ‘  These  ejectments  were  of  a  kind  common  in  Ireland, 
but  not  universal.  The  exceptions  are  the  “  clearing 
away  ”  of  tenants- at-will  for  the  non-payment  of  rent,  or 
because  the  landlord  may  be  a  Protestant  who  desires  to 
clear  off'  a  Catholic  tenantry,  that  he  may  have  in  their 
stead  Protestant  tenants,  who  will  be  Protestant  voters, 
and,  what  is  to  him  and  his  party  of  equal  importance, 
Protestant  jurymen  !  But  the  cases  of  ejectment  now* 
about  to  be  particularized  were  not  the  cases  of  tenants- 
at-will,  nor  of  an  under-tenantry,  who  held  their  land 
from  some  one  subordinate  to  the  landlord ;  they  were 
leaseholders,  holding  direct  from  the  landlord  himself, 
under  covenants  as  indisputably  legal  as  any  lease  in 
Scotland  or  in  England.  The  landlord  never  attempted 
to  dispute  the  validity  of  the  leases ;  he  knew  that  most 
of  them  had  been  granted  by  his  immediate  predecessor, 
and  some  by  the  predecessor’s  father.  He  knew  that  he 


*  League,  Nov.  4. 


254 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


could  not  eject  any  one  of  the  tenants  by  disputing  about 
the  lease,  but  he  knew  that  the  law  gave  him  power  to 
eject  if  the  tenant  did  not  pay  his  rent. 

“  ‘But  here  he  encountered  a  difficulty.  The  very  fact 
which  excited  him  to  war  with  the  tenants  operated  to 
defeat  him. 

“  £  The  farms  were  generally  held  at  about  30s.  an  acre, 
and  from  that  to  40s.  ;  he  knew  the  land  could  be  let 
for  more ;  for  in  some  cases,  where  farms  on  the  same 
estate  were  not  let  on  lease,  he  had  raised  the  rent  to 
60s.  and  70s.  an  acre,  and  found  that  the  people  would 
rather  pay  that  than  renounce  their  holdings.  Thus,  be¬ 
cause  the  farms  were  let  at  a  moderate  rent  to  the  lease¬ 
holders,  he  sought  to  get  them  into  his  own  hands,  that 
he  might  re-let  them  at  higher  rents  ;  but  because  they 
were  cheap,  the  tenants  kept  clear  of  arrears ;  and  he, 
having  no  means  of  breaking  through  the  leases,  was  at  a 
considerable  loss  to  know  how  to  act ;  but  he  did  act,  and 
a  history  of  his  proceedings  will  not  only  exemplify  the 
condition  of  landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland,  but  will,  at 
the  same  time,  show  how  the  laws  in  Ireland  can  be  set 
at  defiance  by  a  man  who  has  money  and  the  reputation 
of  being  a  stanch  adherent  of  the  dominant  party.  This 
last  fact  is  most  necessary  to  be  borne  in  mind,  because 
the  landlord  now  under  notice  has  been  defended  by  the 
press  of  the  dominant  party  as  one  of  the  best  though 
worst-used  of  churchmen.  He  has  been  heard  of  through 
the  government  newspapers  over  the  world  as  a  martyr 
and  a  Christian.  How  far  he  is  entitled  to  the  honor  of 
either,  will  become  apparent  in  the  sequel.  Suffice  it  now 
to  say,  by  way  of  preface,  in  addition  to  what  is  already 
explained,  that  my  authority  for  the  following  state¬ 
ments  rests,  first,  on  the  narratives  of  the  tenantry  them¬ 
selves  ;  second,  on  the  account  given  me  by  a  gentleman 
of  unquestionable  respectability,  who  for  two  years  acted 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


255 


as  the  agent  of  this  landlord,  but  who,  at  last,  threw  up 
his  situation  out  of  sheer  disgust  at  the  odious  work  he 
was  called  upon  to  perform ;  third,  on  the  testimony  of 
several  magistrates  and  other  gentlemen  in  the  towns  of 
Kilkenny  and  Thomastown  ;  fourth,  on  the  information, 
very  comprehensive  and  very  valuable,  afforded  me  by  the 
solicitor  who  has  been  engaged  in  the  defence  of  most  of 
the  tenants  in  the  numerous  law  suits  which  have  arisen 
during  the  last  three  years ;  fifth,  on  evidence  given  in 
various  cases  tried  at  the  sessions  and  assizes,  part  of 
which  has  been  published  in  the  local  papers,  all  of 
which  has  been  recorded  by  official  persons,  who  furnished 
me  with  matters  of  importance  not  published  ;  and  sixth, 
from  what  I  heard  with  my  own  ears  from  the  witnesses 
in  the  assize  court. 

“  ‘  The  district  in  which  this  estate  is  situate,  it  may 
be  proper  to  say,  was,  until  three  years  ago,  a  peaceable 
one  ;  agrarian  crime  was  unknown ;  the  people  were  in¬ 
dustrious  and  moral,  and  there  were  no  constabulary  in 
the  neighborhood,  nor  any  need  of  them.  It  is  only  four 
years  since  the  present  landlord  came  to  the  estate; 
since  which  he  had  upwards  of  two  hundred  and  fifty 
law  suits  with  his  tenantry,  lias  erected  a  police  barrack 
on  his  property,  and  obtained  from  government  a  detach¬ 
ment  of  armed  police  to  remain  there  continually. 

“ 1  The  military,  both  cavalry  and  foot,  have  been  greatly 
augmented  in  the  district  in  the  same  time.  Several 
men  have  been  tried  for  their  lives — some  transported, 
and  some  hanged.  The  tenantry  amount  to  between 
seventy  and  eighty,  and  the  estate  occupies  a  beautiful 
situation  on  each  side  of  the  Nore. 

“  ‘  The  first  proceeding  of  the  landlord  was  against  a 
tenant  who  held  on  a  lease  of  thirty-one  years  and  a  life, 
and  who  owed  no  arrears  up  to  1842.  The  proceedings 
against  him  began  in  March,  1841,  and  have  given  rise  to 


I 


25 G  THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

a  complicated  variety  of  actions  at  law,  ending  with  liis 
ejectment,  and  utter  beggary. 

“  ‘The  following  is  an  extract  from  a  letter  written  by 
the  tenant  to  a  gentleman  in  London,  under  the  date  of 
the  8th  of  the  present  month  : — 

“  I  mentioned,  in  my  last  letter, - ,  of  his  turning  me 

out  and  all  my  family;  and  we  had  to  stop  out  one  night  in 
the  eye  of  my  limekiln,  till  my  sister  came  and  took  my 
family  with  her.  There  were  thirteen  cases  of  his)  the 
landlord’s)  this  time  before  the  sessions — civil  bills  and 
ejectments — of  which  all  were  dismissed,  and  he  had  one 
case  so  bad  that  the  barrister  [this  is  the  presiding  judge 
at  quarter  sessions  to  whom  he  alludes]  cried  shame  on 
him ;  and  he  has  got  shame  enough  before,  and  he  has 
no  mind  to  stop  yet,  after  all  was  said  to  him  in  the 

public  papers.  He  has  distrained  Mr.  J -  G - 

now,  and  his  rent  paid ;  and  he  has  three  chancery  re¬ 
plevins  against  him,  and  another  this  day  for  seizing 

illegally  on  him  the  fourth  time  [this  is  on  Mr.  J - 

C - ] ;  and  he  canted  [sold  by  distraint]  J - E - 

to  the  potatoes,  and  did  not  leave  his  family  one  bit  that 
they  would  eat.”  , 

“  ‘  The  J - E - here  alluded  to  had  been  a  road 

contractor  as  well  as  farmer.  The  landlord  alleged  a 
debt  against  him,  and  threw  him  into  prison.  While 
there  his  contract  was  unperformed,  and  he  lost  it,  and 
sacrificed  his  security  to  perform  it.  It  was  satisfactorily 
proved,  in  a  court  of  law,  that  the  debt  never  existed, 
that  it  was  brought  forward  by  the  landlord  at  the  expense 

of  forgery  and  false  swearing,  upon  which  J -  E - 

brought  an  action  for  false  imprisonment.  Had  the  de¬ 
fendant  not  been  a  landlord,  the  plaintiff  might  have 
prosecuted  him  criminally,  but,  being  a  landlord,  there 
was  no  chance  of  succeeding  against  him. 

“  ‘  Even  in  the  action  of  damages  there  was  little  hope 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


257 


for  J - E - ;  but  the  case  was  so  very  bad,  and  the 

judge,  in  summing  up,  made  such  severe  comments  on 
the  conduct  of  the  landlord,  that  the  jury  gave  a  verdict 
for  plaintiff.  I  was  present  at  the  trial,  and  I  quote  both 
from  my  notes  and  from  the  report  of  the  trial  as  pub¬ 
lished  from  the  local  papers,  when  I  give  the  following 
words  as  a  portion  of  the  judge’s  summary:  “Gentle¬ 
men,  if  you  believe  that  the  defendant  fraudulently 
alleged  this  debt  against  plaintiff  that  he  might  put  him 
in  prison,  and  ruin  him,  you  will  give  a  verdict  ac¬ 
cordingly.  In  that  case  you  will  make  him  worse  than 
the  man  who  goes  boldly  to  the  highway  and  robs  openly. 
You  will  weigh  well  the  evidence  you  have  heard,  and 
if  you  are  satisfied  that  plaintiff  has  been  injured, 
you  will  give  damages  accordingly.  Do  not  give  over¬ 
whelming  damages  ;  still  you  must  teach  defendant  that 
though  he  is  a  gentleman  of  rank  and  property,  he  is  not 
to  trample  on  a  poorer  man  than  himself  with  im¬ 
punity.”  To  this  the  jury  gave  a  verdict  for  plaintiff — 
damages  £100. 

“  ‘  This  case  is  worth  notice  now,  because,  although 
the  landlord,  out  of  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  actions 
at  law,  of  various  kinds,  in  less  than  three  years,  has 
been  defeated  in  four-fifths  of  them,  and  though  he  had 
thirteen  cases  at  last  quarter  sessions,  and  was  defeated 
in  all — he  still  triumphs.  He  appeals  to  higher  courts. 

He  does  not  pay  the  £1 00  damages  to  J - E - .  He 

makes  an  appeal,  which  will  not  be  settled  until  some 

time  next  year.  Meantime  J -  E - ,  by  being  in 

prison,  and  by  being  involved  in  litigation,  of  which  this 
is  but  a  mere  sample — by  losing  his  contract  for  the 
roads,  having  all  his  .implements  and  farming  stock 
seized  and  sold  while  in  prison — was  unable  to  cultivate 
his  land  so  as  to  enable  him  to  pay  his  last  Michaelmas 

E 


258 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


rent.  The  rent  being  less  than  <£100,  which  the  landlord 
owed  him  in  damages,  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  this 
£100  would  be  a  set-off  for  the  rent.  But  no  :  the  letter 
of  the  8th  of  November  says  : — “  And  he  (the  landlord) 

canted  J - R - to  the  potatoes,  and  did  not  leave 

his  family  one  bit  that  it  would  eat !” 

“  ‘  This  J - R - ,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  was  a 

leaseholder ;  and  never  owed  a  farthing  of  rent  until  those 
proceedings  were  taken  against  him  to  compel  him  into 
arrears,  which  would  justify  an  ejectment.  His  case, 
from  first  to  last — from  the  time  that  he  was  an  inde¬ 
pendent  man,  with  as  happy  a  family  around  him  as 
lived  in  the  queen’s  dominions,  living  in  a  house  of  his 
own  building,  with  a  farm-steading  erected  at  his  own 
expense,  which  are  equal  to  any  cottage  or  farm-steading 
of  the  same  extent  in  England  or  Scotland  for  cleanli¬ 
ness,  order,  and  substantialness — I  saw  them  with  my 
own  eyes,  and  judged  for  myself ;  from  the  time  that 

J - R - was  an  independent  man  in  that  farm,  to  the 

present,  when  he  and  his  family  are  potatoless  and  penni¬ 
less,  and  on  the  point  of  being  ejected,  the  proceedings 
against  him  have  been  of  the  most  extraordinary  kind, 
and  almost  beyond  belief.  I  could  not  detail  them  in 
less  than  two  or  three  chapters,  so  they  must,  for  the 
present,  stand  over.  For  the  same  reason  I  do  not  begin 

with  the  case  of  P - R - ,  he  who  writes  the  letter  to 

say  that  he  is  ejected,  and  who  was  the  first  of  the 
leaseholders  against  whom  the  landlord  proceeded.  Suf¬ 
fice  it  for  the  present  to  say  tliatP - R - has  been  five 

times  in  gaol  at  the  suit  of  the  landlord,  and  has  been  a 
party  to  upwards  of  twenty  actions  at  law,  and  that  he 
is  now  a  houseless,  landless,  penniless,  potatoless  outcast, 
though  lorn  on  the  estate,  though  a  leaseholder,  and 
though  he  never  owed  a  farthing  of  rent  until  twelve  months 


/ 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


259 


after  the  landlord  proceeded  against  him  to  break  his 

lease ! !  !  ’  ”* 

Thus,  should  misfortune  overtake  an  industrious  Irish 
tenant,  we  see  what  he  has  to  expect  at  the  hands  of  the 
Irish  landlords,  of  whom  the  above  are,  for  the  most 
part,  the  type. 

Here  are  histories  in  themselves,  authentic  records  of 
Irish  landlordism  twenty-five  and  thirty  years  ago.  I 
defy  any  man,  except  an  Irish  landlord,  to  read  them, 
and  not  feel  his  soul  fired  with  honest  indignation  at  the 
“  diabolical  ”  work  which  they  depict.  And  yet,  a  few 
years  later  down,  and  that  work  was  mercy  itself  as 
compared  with  the  horrors  which  the  same  landlords 
feared  not  to  perpetrate.  Ho  wonder  that  the  territorial 
monsters  should,  in  plain  language,  be  branded  as  “  mur¬ 
derers  ;”  for,  if  it  be  murder  to  deprive  a  man  unjustly  of 
life,  no  matter  by  what  means,  I  know  of  no  others  who 
have  such  claim  to  the  title  as  the  exterminating  land¬ 
lord.  But,  comment  on  such  deeds  and  such  a  state  of 
things  is  simply  superfluous.  Hot  merely  for  the  over¬ 
whelming  facts  attested,  but  from  the  opinion  of  the 
most  competent  and  dispassionate  witnesses — from  the 
late  Serjeant  Howley  to  Sir  Robert  Reel — it  remains  for 
ever  a  blasting  record  of  Irish  landlordism  thirty  and 
forty  years  ago,  worthy  of  its  progeny  of  this  day. 

Later  down,  and  since  the  publication  of  the  foregoing, 
and  the  delivery  of  Sir  Robert  Peel’s  famous  speech  (in 
1843),  no  less  than  170,000  small  farms,  of  less  than  five 
acres  each,  were  “  consolidated  ”  within  the  six  following 
years.  Ho  doubt  the  political  economist  of  the  Malthus 
school  will  say  “  all  right  ”  to  this  wholesale  clearing  ;  but 
if  you  consult  Thornton  (“  Plea,”  or  “  Over-population”), 
or  Mill  (“  Political  Economy”),  you  will  find  from  them, 


*  Quoted  in  Dublin  Review,  v.  xv. 


260 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


that  the  size  of  the  farms  in  Belgium,  France,  the  Tyrol, 
Switzerland,  Tuscany,  and  the  Channel  Islands,  average 
only  from  six  to  ten  acres.  Still  smaller,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  the  farms  of  ancient  Italy  previous  to 
the  expulsion  of  Tarquin,  which  were  only  two  jiigera, 
or  less  than  two  acres.*  Under  the  Licinian  law,  which 
made  the  average  seven  jugera,  and  which  remained 
in  force  for  ages,  the  republic  continued  to  advance  in 
population  and  prosperity.  Large  farms  proved  its  de¬ 
struction. 

In  1846,  Earl  Grey  thus  expressed  himself  on  the 
clearance  system  :  “  It  was  undeniable  that  the  clearance 
system  prevailed  to  a  great  extent  in  Ireland ;  and  that 
such  things  could  take  place,  he  cared  not  how  large  a 
population  might  be  suffered  to  grow  up  in  a  particular 
district,  was  a  disgrace  to  a  civilized  country.”!  Lord 
John  Russell  expressed  himself  in  terms  no  less  strong. 
However,  the  expression  of  such  opinions  even  from  such 
high  authorities  had  not  the  slightest  imaginable  effect. 

In  1849,  50,000  more  families  were  swept  off  by  the 
monster  extermination.  “More  than  50,000  families  , 
were  in  that  year  turned  out  of  their  wretched  dwell¬ 
ings  without  pity,  and  without  a  refuge.  .  .  .  We  have 
made  Ireland — I  speak  it  deliberately — we  have  made  it 
the  most  degraded  and  the  most  miserable  country  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  All  the  world  is  crying  shame  upon  us ;  but 
we  are  equally  callous  to  our  ignominy  and  to  the  results 
of  our  misgovernment.”J 

And  Irishmen  of  to-day,  lay  and  clerical,  who  presume 
to  censure  such  abominations,  or  to  speak  of  them  but 

*  Niebuhr. 

+  Lords,  March  23rd,  1S46. 

t  Kay’s  “  Social  Condition  and  Education  of  the  People,’ 
i.  315,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


261 


with  bated  breath,  are  put  down  as  rebels,  socialists,  and 
enemies  of  11  law  and  order the  landlords  being  in  the 
minds  of  such  people  “  law  and  order  ”  itself,  while  in 
reality  they  are  the  greatest  scourge  that  ever  afflicted 
any  country — the  greatest  disturbers  of  the  country’s 
peace. 


262 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTEE  XVI. 

CONTINUATION  OF  THE  SAME  SUBJECT. 


“  In  the  midst  of  all  these  horrors— eighty  deaths  of  starvation  per  month,  in 
one  parish,  in  the  county  Clare— the  agent  and  drivers  are  as  busy  as  ever 
sweeping  hill  and  vale  before  them.  Yesterday  I  met  forty  or  fifty  skeletons 
of  cows,  scarce  able  to  move,  driven  to  pound  for  the  last  May  rent.  On  the 
very  farm  so  swept  and  cleared  of  every  quadruped,  there  is  scarcely  a  house 
that  is  not  a  lazaretto.  Fever  is  in  every  cabin.” — Dublin  Corresp.  of  “  Daily 
News,"  3rd  March,  1847. 


u  We  confidently  pronounce  that  the  extent  of  peat  soil 
in  Ireland  exceeds  2,830,000  English  acres,  of  which  we 
have  shown,  at  least,  1,57-6,000  acres  to  consist  of  flat 
red  bog ;  all  of  which,  according  to  the  opinions  above 
declared,  might  be  converted  to  the  general  purposes  of 
agriculture.  The  remaining  1,255,000  acres  form  the 
covering  of  mountains,  of  which  a  very  large  proportion 
might  be  improved,  at  a  small  expense,  for  pasture,  or 
still  more  beneficially  applied  to  the  purposes  of  planta¬ 
tion.  We  wish,  indeed,  it  were  possible  to  fix  the 
attention  of  proprietors  upon  this  subject,  so  connected 
with  the  interests  of  the  British  empire.”* 

Perhaps  the  most  melancholy  chapter  of  modern 
history  is  that  which  deals  with  the  Irish  famine  of 
1846-7,  and  the  concomitant  and  consequent  evictions. 
All  the  misery  wrought  by  the  one  and  -  other  can  only 
be  revealed  at  the  day  of  the  great  general  reckoning, 
when  landlord  and  tenant — the  exterminator  and  the 


*  “  Report  of  Bog  Commissioners,”  1S14,  p.  17. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


263 


exterminated — will  stand  before  their  common  Judge 
both  equally  landless,  and  with  no  title  deeds  to  their 
coming  estates  but  their  virtues,  and  especially  that 
measure  of  mercy  and  love  which  they  showed  their 
fellow- creatures  on  earth. 

For  particulars  of  the  famine  I  must  refer  the  reader 
to  the  “  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Friends,”  as  de¬ 
tailed  statistics  of  these  barbarous  evictions  would  be 
out  of  the  question  within  the  compass  prescribed  for 
this  work.  When  we  bear  in  mind  that,  during  the 
twenty  years  from  1846  to  1866,  our  entire  population 
dwindled  down  from  nearly  eight  millions  and  a  half  to 
five  millions  and  a  half,  we  can  easily  fancy  that  none 
of  the  previous  pictures  of  famine  and  eviction  horrors 
have  been  overcharged. 

In  1841,  the  census  population  was  8,175,124.  In 
1851,  it  had  descended  to  6,551,970;  while,  during  the 
following  decade,  down  to  1861,  a  decade  during  which 
the  viceregal  and  general  government  and  landlord 
changes  rang  on  the  increasing  “  prosperity  ”  of  the 
country,  it  descended  still  further,  to  the  figure  of 
5,798,564.  Now,  if  we  bear  in  mind  that  from  1841 
to  1846  there  must  have  been  an  increase  of  over 
200,000  souls,  we  would  have  the  population  of  that 
year,  in  round  numbers,  8,400,000 ;  and  next,  keeping 
before  us  the  continued  decrease  from  1861  to  this, 
which  must  have  still  further  reduced  the  numbers  to 
5,500,000  or  5,400,000,  we  have,  as  stated,  the  total 
absolute  reduction — three  millions,  in  round  numbers. 
Of  these,  the  last  official  returns  (of  this  year)  set  down 
1,917,077 — nearly  two  millions,  in  round  numbers — as 
emigrants  since  1851  alone.  The  total  decrease,  there¬ 
fore,  by  emigration  must  have  exceeded  2,500,000;  while 
an  equal  number  must  have  actually  died,  and  of  these 
over  a  million  by  the  government  and  landlord-made 


264 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


famine.  This  is  tlie  lowest  calculation.  For,  taking  the 
average  increase  of  population  as  a  standard,  our  popula¬ 
tion  to-day  should  be  12,000,000  souls.  Thus,  of  the  six 
millions  and  a  half  deficit,  two  and  a  half  have  emigrated, 
two  and  a  half  have  died — a  moiety  of  starvation — and 
two  and  a  half  have  been  prevented  from  coming  into 
the  world  at  all  by  the  combined  operation  of  the  above 
two  causes.  So  that  the  simple  truth,  awful  as  it  is 
simple,  stares  us  in  the  face,  that,  within  the  last  twenty- 
three  years,  we  have  lost,  by  English  government  and  land¬ 
lord  law,  a  million  souls  above  our  present  population  !  ! 

In  1848,  Captain  (the  late  General)  Larcom  furnished 
a  statistical  report  of  the  evictions  and  consolidations 
that  had,  even  at  that  early  stage  after  the  famine,  or, 
more  correctly,  that  later  stage  of  the  terrible  visitation, 
been  effected  by  the  landlord  crowbar-brigade. 

Decrease  in  the  number  of  farms : — 


From  1  to  5  acres 
5  to  15 
15  to  30 


>5 


24,147 

27,397 

4,274 


Above  30,  increase 


3,670 


That  is,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  J  ohn  Mitchel,  “  70,000 
occupiers,  in  all  numbering  about  300,000,  were  rooted 
out  of  the  land.” 

“  In  Leinster  the  decrease  in  the  number  of  holdings 
not  exceeding  one  acre,  as  compared  with  the  decrease  of 
1847,  was  3,749 ;  above  one  and  not  exceeding  five, 
4,026  ;  of  five  and  not  exceeding  fifteen,  2,546  ;  of  from 
fifteen,  391  ;  making  a  total  of  10,000. 

ei  In  Munster  the  decrease  in  the  holdings  under  thirty 
acres  is  stated  at  18,814;  the  increase  over  thirty  at 
1,399. 

“  In  Ulster,  decrease,  1,502  ;  increase,  1,134. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


265 


“  In  Connaught,  where  the  labor  of  extermination  was 
least,  the  clearance  has  been  most  extensive.  There,  in 
particular,  the  roots  of  holders  of  the  soil  were  never 
planted  beneath  the  surface,  and  consequently  were  ex¬ 
posed  to  every  exterminator’s  hand.  There  were,  in  1847, 
35,634  holders  of  from  one  to  five  acres ;  in  the  following 
year  they  were  less  by  9,703.  There  were  74,707  holders 
of  from  five  to  fifteen  acres;  less  in  one  year  by  12,891. 
Those  of  from  fifteen  to  thirty  acres  were  reduced  by 
2,121 ;  a  total  depopulation  of  26,499  holders  of  land, 
exclusive  of  their  families,  was  effected  in  Connaught  in 
one  year.”  In  other  words,  there  was  a  decrease  of  an 
agrarian,  agricultural  population,  in  that  one  year,  in 
Connaught  alone,  of  at  least  132,500  souls;  to  which  if 
you  add  at  least  11,000  or  12,000  mere  laborers  who  lived 
by  the  land,  you  will  have  a  total  deficit  for  one  year, 
in  one  province  alone  of  unhappy  Ireland,  of  150,000 
souls !  ! 

No  wonder  that  honest  John  Mitchel — that  more  than 
Cato  of  Irish  politics — should  thus  comment  on  the  fear¬ 
ful  havoc  thus  officially  recorded  :  **  On  this  report,” 
writes  he,  “  it  may  be  remarked,  that  it  was  a  list  of 
killed  and  wounded  in  one  year  of  carnage  only,  and 
of  one  class  of  people  only.  It  takes  no  account  of  the 
dead  in  that  multitudinous  class,  thinned  the  most  by  the 
famine,  who  had  no  land  at  all,  but  lived  by  the  labor  of 
their  hands,  and  who  were  exposed  before  the  others  as 
having  nothing  but  life  to  lose.  .  .  .  The  slaughter  by 
the  famine  was  enormous  this  season.  Here  is  one  para¬ 
graph  from  among  the  commercial  reports  of  the  Irish 
papers,  which  will  suggest  more  than  any  labored  narra¬ 
tive  could  inculcate  :  4  Upwards  of  150  ass  hides  have 
been  delivered  in  Dublin  from  the  county  Mayo  for  ex¬ 
portation  to  Liverpool.  The  carcases,  owing  to  the 
scarcity  of  provisions,  had  been  used  as  food.’  ”  And  Mr. 


20G 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Mitchel  adds  :  “  But  those  who  could  afford  to  dine  upon 
famished  jackasses  were  few  indeed.  During  this  winter 
of  1848-9,  hundreds  of  thousands  perished  of  hunger. 
During  this  same  winter  the  herds  and  harvests  raised 
on  Irish  grounds  were  floating  off  to  England  on  every 
tide,  and  during  the  same  winter  almost  every 
steamship  from  England  daily  carried  Irish  paupers, 
men,  women,  and  children,  away  from  Liverpool  and 
Bristol,  to  share  the  good  cheer  of  their  kinsmen  at 
home.”* 

But  I  leave  it  to  others  to  record  the  untold  horrors  of 
that  dreadful  time — made  more  horrible  still  by  the  in¬ 
difference,  nay,  the  very  delight  with  which  ministers 
and  their  tools,  the  landlords,  saw  the  people  melting 
away  in  the  agonies  of  combined  famine  and  eviction. 
My  chief  occupation  is  with  the  latter  fell  instrument  of 
death,  murder,  and  desolation. 

The  number  of  houses  levelled  between  1841  and 
1861  was  270,000,  representing,  at  least,  a  population 
of  1,300,000  human  souls — all  driven  to  the  workhouse, 
exile,  or  death. 

In  the  parish  of  Louisburgh  or  Kilgeever ,  scores  of 
once  comfortable  townlands  have  literally  been  “  cleared” 
off  by  the  Earl  of  Lucan  and  the  Marquis  of  Sligo — 
nothing  is  now  to  be  seen,  for  miles  around,  but  the 
herd  and  his  dog,  sheep  and  bullocks,  and  game.  The 
population  of  that  parish  in  1846  was  2,200  families ; 
it  is  now  reduced  to  about  700. 

In  the  parish  of  Aughagower,  Captain  Houston  occu¬ 
pies  two  hundred  square  miles,  out  of  which  every 
living  soul,  except  a  few  herds,  was  banished  without 
remorse  by  the  Marquis  of  Sligo.  The  captain  obtained 
a  lease  at  a  reduced  rent,  like  every  other  Scotch  and 

*  “History  of  Ireland,”  by  John  Mitchel,  vol  ii.,  p.  452-3. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


267 


English  settler ;  which  the  natives,  of  course,  could  never 
expect.* 

It  may  he  remarked  that  the  unfortunate  Mr.  Hunter, 
recently  shot  dead  near  Newport,  had  graduated  under 
the  gallant  captain. 

*  About  the  antecedents  of  this  “captain”  I  know  little. 
But  the  following  letter  pretty  clearly  illustrates  bis  notions 
about  “liberty”  of  conscience  and  education.  In  tbe  summer 
of  1867,  I)  in  company  of  tbe  Rev.  Patrick  Ryan,  C.C.,  of 
Louisburgb,  visited  the  famous  Delphi,  once  a  summer  residence 
of  Lord  Plunket.  During  our  visit  we  called  at  a  school,  some 
time  previously  provided  by  the  “  captain”  for  the  more  inde¬ 
pendent,  or  the  less  dependent,  of  his  dependents — such  as  could 
afford  to  pay  from  £1  to  £3  a-year  to  the  teacher.  The  poorer 
sort  were  entirely  excluded.  Father  Ryan  requested  that  the 
then  Catholic  teacher  might  be  allowed  to  instruct  them  after 
hours,  and  he  was  peremptorily  refused.  A  proselytizing  teacher 
of  the  Irish  Church  Mission  school  is  now  inducted  by  the  gallant 
captain.  Who  will  say  that  the  people  are  not  patient,  to  put  up 
with  such  pranks  on  the  part  of  a  settler  ?  It  will  be  seen  by 
the  following  letter  that  he  refuses  any  the  smallest  interference 
on  the  part  of  the  Catholic  clergyman  in  the  matter  of  the  educa¬ 
tion  of  his  Catholic  dependents : — 

“Doulough,  Westport,  County  Mayo, 
24th  October,  1869. 

“  Sir — When  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  last  week  I 
had  not  then  read  the  resolutions  of  the  Roman  Catholic  bishops, 
nor  had  I  seen  an  account  of  Mr.  Lavelle’s  very  objectionable 
speech.  As  I  am  informed  that  Mr.  Lavelle  was  lately  with  you 
in  Bundorragh,  and,  with  you,  made  some  remarks  relative 
to  the  schools,  I  am  sorry  that  I  must  now  decline  to  allow 
any  supervision  whatever  on  your  part  with  regard  to  the 
Delphi  schools.  I  cannot  permit  the  schoolmaster  to  teach  under 
your  authority  at  Bundorragh,  nor  can  I  allow  any  Roman 
Catholic  teacher  to  be  imposed  upon  the  people  living  on  my 
land.  I  am  your  obedient  servant, 

“  W.  Houston. 

“  To  the  Rev.  Patrick  Ryan,  C.C.” 


268 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


In  1841,  the  population  of  Castlebar  Union 

*w  as  . « «  » •  *  « . .  . . .  . . »  * « «  58jOT8 

In  1857,  it  had  dwindled  to  ...  ...  ...  36,893 

In  1841,  there  were  ...  ...  ...  10,314  houses. 

In  1857,  only .  6,200  „ 

The  following  townlands,  within  that  union,  were  com¬ 
pletely  cleared  by  Sir  Eoger  Palmer,  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  creatures  left  in  bogs,  and  were  given  to  his 
bailiff : — 


Population  in 
1841. 

Do  in  1851. 

Do.  in  1861. 

Killiree  Upper  .  . 

243 

97 

16 

Drumneen .... 

172 

38 

70 

Curnagushlane  .  . 

200 

67 

67 

Carlia . 

193 

101 

72 

Boheh  . 

44 

6 

7 

Lappalali  .... 

81 

SI 

74 

933 

390 

306 

An  Englishman,  Mr.  Wilbraham,  brother-in-law  of  the 
Marquis  of  Sligo,  has  obtained  a  whole  country  side, 
out  of  which  whole  villages  'were  extirpated,  in  the 
parish  of  Kilgeever — that  is,  nine  hundred  and  eleven 
souls  have  been  driven  to  beggary,  exile,  or  death,  by 
one  “  master,”  in  one  poor-law  union  alone,  within  the 
space  of  twenty  years  ;  and  that  landlord  has  extensive 
property  in  several  other  unions  of  the  county  Mayo. 

Another  Scotchman,  of  the  name  of  Simpson,  holds 
2,000  acres  of  prime  land  near  Ballinrobe,  out  of  which 
some  200  families,  say  1,000  souls,  were  evicted  by  the 
Earl  of  Lucan  after  the  famine.  Of  these  several  were  well 
able  to  retain  their  land,  and  even  offered  to  take  up 
that  for  which  their  poorer  neighbors  faultlessly  fell  into 
arrear.  No.  The  Celt  must  go,  and  they,  as  well  as 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


2G9 


their  less  independent  countrymen,  had  to  yield  beneath 
the  strokes  of  George  Ormsby’s  crowbar.* 

And  here,  too,  did  the  noble  earl  display  no  small 
amount  of  that  adroitness  for  which  he  is  so  much  dis¬ 
tinguished.  Numbers  of  the  “  disinherited  ”  fled,  as  is 
usual  in  such  cases,  for  shelter  into  the  little  town  of 
Ballinrobe.  The  divisional  rates  thus  rose  in  proportion 
to  the  number  of  paupers.  But  my  Lord  Lucan  was  by 
no  means  to  pay  any  of  the  penalty  of  his  inhuman  act ; 
and,  if  he  made  paupers,  let  others,  less  poor,  support 
them.  So  he  manages  to  get  the  country  side,  which  he 
had  just  devastated,  into  the  Hollymount  electoral  divi¬ 
sion,  in  which  there  was  only  the  name  of  a  town — a 
small  village — and  into  which,  accordingly,  the  banished 
tenants  could  not  congregate.  I  well  remember,  though 
I  cannot  just  now  lay  my  hand  on,  a  correspondence 
which  the  Westport  Poor  Law  Board  of  Guardians  had 
with  him,  bitterly  complaining  of  his  defalcations  in  re¬ 
gard  to  payment  of  the  rates.  Thus,  for  the  paupers 
made  by  his  lordship  on  one  side  of  the  county,  he  made 
others  pay,  while ;  for  a  time  at  least,  none  at  all  was 
found  to  meet  the  support  of  those  manufactured  by  his 
crowbar  in  the  west.  I  know  of  one  to  wnland  there — I  have 
known  it  since  my  childhood — Wasteland,  the  tenants  of 
which,  having  fallen  into  arrears,  were,  in  due  course, 
visited  by  the  sheriff,  crowbar-brigade,  and  the  posse 
comitatus  of  police.  The  sheriff  took  ill,  and  could  not 
execute  the  habere.  Meantime,  the  tenants  managed  to 
scrape  up  a  year’s  rent,  and  went  with  it  to  the  office  at 

*  It  was  in  the  crowbar  demolitions  of  Lord  Lucan,  devised  and 
executed  by  his  agent,  Mr.  G.  Ormsby,  that  the  odious  word 
‘  ‘  crowbar-brigade”  originated.  He  was  brother  of  Mr.  Thomas 
Ormsby,  who  evicted  the  author’s  mother  for  having  her  married 
daughter  in  one  house  with  her,  though  the  old  lady  would  be 
otherwise  left  to  the  care  and  mercy  of  servants. 


270 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Castlebar,  a  distance  of  twenty-five  Irish  miles-  His  lord- 
ship  saw  them,  fine,  athletic  men,  with  visages  no  doubt 
reduced  by  the  ordeal  of  hunger  through  which  they  had 
passed,  and  out  of  which  they  were  just  emerging,  but 
clothed  only  in  their  wool- white  baneen — their  outer  coats 
being,  no  doubt,  “  in  the  pawn.”  The  sight  offended  his 
noble  eyes ;  and  he  ordered  them  summarily  off,  issuing 
peremptory  instructions  to  have  the  terrible  habere  carried 
into  immediate  effect.  So  it  was  ;  and  so  is  Wasteland 
now  “  waste  ”  indeed. 

For  the  radius  of  from  one  to  two  miles  all  around  Castle¬ 
bar  nothing  is  to  be  seen  to-day  but  vast  fields,  trodden  by 
bullocks  and  sheep,  with  the  everlasting  “  L  ”  branded 
on  their  sides,  grazing  on  the  very  sites  of  the  fire-places 
of  many  hundred  once  happy  homes.  Here  and  there 
you  may  see  a  huge  turnip  and  meadow  field,  destined 
for  the  winter  support  of  these  “  flocks  and  herds.”  How 
the  spirits  of  the  thousand  human  beings  who  once  trod  and 
tilled  those  fields  must  look  down  to-day  on  this  beastly 
substitute  thus  made  for  themselves  !  !  How  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  those  banished,  murdered  sires,  must 
look  back  across  the  wide  wave,  and  traverse,  in  spirit, 
those  consolidated  fields  again,  and  with  clenched  fist  and 
set  teeth,  and  seething  soul,  renew  their  vow  that,  one 
day  or  other,  the  beast  must  retire,  and  they,  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  disinherited,  recover  their  rightful  own 
again  !  Indeed,  it  is  said  that  his  lordship,  having 
found  his  latifundism  rather  an  expensive  experiment 
• — hardly  paying  itself — would  now  rather  let  to  tenants 
these  extensive  tracts  again.  But,  it  is  also  said,  that 
“no  Irish  need  apply,”  inasmuch  as  they  must  be  let  in 
large  farms,  such  as  any  stray  son  of  the  -former  occu¬ 
piers  could  not  undertake  to  rent.  Time,  however, 
will  duly  reveal  the  merits  of  these  on  dits ,  as  it 
will  those  of  the  entire  inhuman  system  of  which  his 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


271 


lordsliip,  Sligo,  and  Palmer  were  the  chief  apostles  in 
Mayo. 

In  the  county  Galway  Mr.  Allan  Pollock  bears  away 
the  palm.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  before  the  face  of  this 
“  stranger  ”  no  less  than  five  thousand  souls  had  to 
“  %  the  bounds  of  their  country  and  their  sweet  fields 
and  that  the  land  which  God  intended  for  the  support 
and  happiness  of  many  men,  this  one  man  has  seized,  by 
the  operation  of  fell  English  law,  to  himself,  and  handed 
over  to  beasts  of  the  field.  No  doubt  it  must  be  a  source 
of  vast  delight  to  the  children  of  the  banished  “  sons  of 
the  soil  ”  to  read,  somewhere  in  the  back  settlements  of 
America,  that  their  exterminator  obtained  the  first  prize 
for  a  Leicester  ram  at  the  recent  Agricultural  Show  in 
Dublin.  This  consoling  reward  must  weigh  with  them 
against  all  the  misery,  sin,  and  death  which  the  “  human 
monster  ” — no,  the  “  political  economist  ” — had  caused. 

Perhaps  the  following  almost  incredible  fact,  supplied 
me  by  one  of  the  most  respected  and  trustworthy 
clergymen  in  Ireland — a  fact  vouched  for  by  him  as  hav¬ 
ing  come  within  his  own  personal  knowledge — may  illus¬ 
trate  the  entire  system.  A  certain  landlord  in  his 
neighborhood,  county  Galway,  got  his  cheap  decree  at 
quarter  sessions  against  a  tenant  on  his  property.  This 
was  early  in  October ;  October  and  November  passed 
over,  and  a  gleam  of  hope  began  to  enter  the  poor  man’s 
soul,  that,  at  least,  he  would  be  permitted  to  pass  the 
Christmas  holidays  in  his  old  home.  December  was 
fast  running  out ;  the  sun  of  Christmas  eve  had  actually 
risen,  and  with  it  the  poor  man  and  his  wife  and  family — 
when,  horror  of  horrors  !  whom  does  he  see  approaching 
his  cabin  door,  followed  by  a  posse  comitatus  of  the 
crowbar-brigade,  but  the  sheriff,  surrounded  by  a  detach- 

*  “  Nos  patriee  fines  et  dulcia  linqnimns  arva 
Nos  patriam  fugimus.” — Virgil,  “Bucol.” 


272 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ment  of  the  constabulary  force  !  The  family  was  flung  out 
like  vermin,  and  the  work  of  demolition  occupied  but  a 
few  minutes.  The  evicted  family  passed  that  and  the 
subsequent  Christmas  night  with  no  other  covering  but 
that  of  the  wide  canopy  of  heaven ;  as  strict  prohibitions 
had  been  issued  to  all  the  other  tenants  to  harbor  him 
on  pain  of  similar  treatment !  ! 

Truly,  in  the  words  already  quoted  of  Sadleir,  “  one  such 
act  suffices  to  make  a  monster.”  And  from  it  we  may, 
without  entering  into  further  detail,  form  a  conception  of 
the  horrors  perpetrated,  during  the  last  twenty-three 
years  especially,  of  the  crowbar  regime. 

In  the  year  1858,  alone,  no  less  than  eighty  families 
were  flung  adrift  on  the  shores  of  Blacksod  bay  by  a 
Protestant  clergyman.  Mr.  Adair,  of  Derryveagh  noto¬ 
riety,  rooted  out  at  one  stroke  no  less  than  350  souls  in 
1862,  to  make  room  for  Scotch  sheep  and  “  kyloes.”  A 
cargo  of  these  sheep,  with  their  owner,  his  wife  and  child, 
went  down  on  their  transit  from  Scotland  a  short  time  after. 
In  1860,  the  present  Earl  of  Leitrim,  not  alone  evicted 
the  Eev.  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  Parish  Priest  of  Gortliteragli, 
but,  owing  to  an  oversight  on  the  part  of  the  rev.  gentle¬ 
man’s  predecessor  in  having  the  Catholic  church  inclu¬ 
ded  in  a  lease  for  life  of  some  land  demised  to  himself, 
obtained  legal  possession  of  the  church  at  the  head  of 
almost  1,000  of  her  Majesty’s  forces,  civil  and  military  !!! 

In  the  barony  of  Erris,  a  tenant  was  actually  evicted 
for  giving  lodgings  to  his  parish  priest — the  pastor 
having  no  other  house  to  shelter  him — as  such  letting  of 
the  house,  or  admitting  in  of  a  lodger,  was  against  “  the 
rules  of  the  estate.”  The  late  Lord  Plunket  “  cleared  ” 
off  every  soul  of  four  townlands — the  -  two  Tourma- 
keadies,  Gortfree,  and  Gorteemore,  and  enclosed  them 
for  himself,  his  game,  and  his  bullocks.  The  majority  of 
those  creatures  had  been  gradually  rooted  out  since  Lord 
Plunket  first  got  footing  in  the  place  from  his  son-in-law, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


273 


the  Rev.  Sir  Francis  Lynch  Blosse.  The  remainder  were 
ruthlessly  expelled  by  the  “  bishop  burglar,”  as  a  London 
paper  called  him,  on  the  21st,  22nd,  and  23rd  Novem¬ 
ber,  1860,  for  having  withdrawn  their  children  from  his 
proselytizing  schools. 

Thus  has  the  history  of  Ireland  these  forty  years  past 
been  a  history  of  extermination.  In  extermination,  as 
we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter,  we  read  the  origin  and 
secret  of  all  the  discontent,  disaffection,  agitation,  and 
insurrection,  which  have  prevailed,  or  cropped  up,  during 
all  that  time.  What  wonder,  then,  that  Irishmen,  who 
feel  intensely  the  outrage  done  to  their  poor  fellow- 
countrymen  by  this  infamous  system,  should  express 
themselves  in  language  not  precisely  gauged  by  the  mea¬ 
sure  of  state-paper  caution,  or  nauseated  by  that  un¬ 
savory  ingredient  going  by  the  name  of  moderation1? 
“  Moderation,”  indeed  !  when  one  witnesses  “  the  cabins 
of  the  peasantry  pulled  down  in  such  numbers  as  to  give 
the  appearance,  throughout  whole  regions  of  the  south,  and, 
still  more,  of  the  west,  of  a  country  devastated  and  desolated 
by  the  passage  of  a  hostile  army,”'6  and  “  those  western  coun¬ 
ties  in  which  no  man  can  travel  without  feeling  that  some 
enormous  crime  has  been  committed  by  the  government  under 
which  that  people  live” \ — and,  I  should  add,  through  the 
landlords,  whom  that  government  has  retained  for  the 
special  purpose.  Of  the  two,  indeed — the  landlord  and 
the  government — the  latter  is  the  greater  criminal ;  and 
the  Irish  peasant  and  his  advocate  only  regard  the  former 
as  the  agent  of  the  latter,  for  accomplishing  the  nefarious 
ends  of  Celtic  depopulation.  And  yet,  peasant  and 
advocate  are  accused,  the  one  of  violence  of  conduct,  the 

*  Quarterly  Review,  March,  1854. 

+  Speech  on  the  Regium  Donum,  House  of  Commons,  6th  July, 
1854,  by  John  Bright.  Abbe  Peraud,  “ L’lrlande  Contemp.,”  v.  i., 
p.  300. 

S 


274 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


other  of  intemperance  of  speech,  if  they  resent  atrocities 
without  parallel,  for  centuries,  in  any  other  country  on  the 
face  of  the  globe. 

“  In  comparison,”  says  a  writer  in  the  Dublin  Review , 
“  to  the  mass  of  suffering  which  is  unsparingly  inflicted, 
the  state  of  popular  feeling  and  action  in  Ireland  is 
quiescence  itself.  No;  compared  to  the  provocations 
they  receive,  we  say  that  the  blood  of  Irishmen  is  tame, 
is  humble  ;  nor  is  there  any  other  people  in  Europe  who 
would  have  so  long  brooked  the  wrongs  they  have  en¬ 
dured,  and  not  risen  up  in  a  simultaneous  effort  to  shake 
off  the  annoyance  of  such  heavy  and  contemptible  op¬ 
pressors.”'"' 

This  is  no  less  true  to-day  than  it  was  thirty  years  ago. 
So  much  so,  that  even  the  writer  of  these  pages  stands 
agreeably  astounded  at  the  “  quiescence  ”  of  the  people 
of  certain  parts  of  Mayo,  in  the  neighborhood  of  West- 
port,  who  partly  have  been,  and  partly  are  being,  wed 
out,  “cleared  off”- — to  retain  the  Emigration  Committee 
phrase — to  make  room  for  the  Durhams  and  kyloes  of  a 
noble  lord,  the  brother  of  a  noble  proprietor.  But  it 
may  be  said  this  is  only  the  evidence  of  an  interested 
witness — a  mere  Papist  periodical.  In  answer,  while  I 
may  remark  that  that  same  periodical,  Papist  though  it 
be,  is,  and  ever  has  been,  w^ra-Conservative  in  its  prin¬ 
ciples,  let  me  adduce  the  following  testimony  from  an 
authority  not  to  be  called  in  question  when  furnishing 
such  evidence — the  report  of  the  “Land  Occupation 
Commissioners  :”  “  A  reference  to  the  evidence  of  most 

of  the  witnesses  will  show  that  the  agricultural  laborer 
of  Ireland  continues  to  suffer  the  greatest  privations  and 
hardships ;  that  he  continues  to  depend  upon  casual  and 
precarious  employment  for  subsistence ;  that  he  is  still 


*  Dublin  Review ,  July,  1SS6. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


275 


badly  housed,  badly  fed,  badly  clothed,  and  badly  paid 
for  his  labor.  Our  personal  experience  and  observa¬ 
tions  during  our  enquiry  have  afforded  us  a  melancholy 
confirmation  of  these  statements  ;  and  we  cannot  forbear 
expressing  our  strong  sense  of  the  patient  endurance  which 
the  laboring  classes  have  generally  exhibited  under  suffer¬ 
ings  greater ,  we  believe,  than  the  people  of  any  other  country 
of  Europe  have  to  sustain”* 

Be  it  remembered,  the  above  was  written  before  the 
wholesale  clearances,  that  succeeded  the  famine,  took 
place.  I  believe  that,  at  this  moment,  the  pen  is  in  mo¬ 
tion,  in  another  side  of  the  island,  to  picture  still  more 
vividly  the  havoc  created  by  these  exterminations,  un¬ 
paralleled  these  two  thousand  years.  It  was  in  reference 
to  them  that  the  Times  declared,  some  time  in  1852,  I 
think,  that  “  the  name  of  an  Irish  landlord  stinkecl  in  the 
nostrils  of  Christendom,”  or  something  to  that  effect; 
and  a  few  years  previously  the  same  authority  declared 
as  follows :  “  Property  is  there  (Ireland)  ruled  with 
most  savage  and  tyrannical  sway.  The  landlords  there 
exercise  their  rights  with  a  hand  of  iron,  and  neglect 
their  duties  with  a  front  of  brass.”  The  following  is  the 
entire  passage  : — 

“The  people  of  England  have  most  culpably  connived 

at  a  national  iniquity . Property  ruled  with  savage 

and  tyrannical  sway.  It  exercised  its  rights  with  a  hand 
of  iron,  and  renounced  its  duties  with  a  front  of  brass. 
The  ‘  fat  of  the  land,’  the  ‘  flower  of  its  wheat,’  its  ‘  milk 
and  its  honey,’  flowed  from  its  shores,  in  tribute  to  the 
ruthless  absentee,  or  his  less  guilty  cousin,  the  usurious 
lender.  It  was  all  drain  and  no  return.  But  if  strength 
and  industry  fared  but  ill  in  a  land  where  capital  was  in 

*  Quoted  in  the  “Transactions  during  the  Famine  in  Ireland,  by 
the  Society  of  Friends,”  pp.  7-S. 


276 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


perpetual  flux  and  decay,  flow  much  more  poverty  and 
weakness  ?  In  an  integral  part  of  the  British  empire,  on 
the  soil  trodden  by  a  British  sovereign,  the  landowner 
was  allowed  to  sweep  away  the  produce  of  the  earth 
without  leaving  even  a  gleaning  for  them  that  were 
ready  to  perish.  And  they  did  perish  year  by  year  con¬ 
tinually  from  sheer  destitution.  The  whole  Irish  people 
were  debased  by  the  spectacle  and  contact  of  licensed 
mendicancy  and  recognized  starvation.  England  stupidly 
winked  at  this  tyranny.  Ready  enough  to  vindicate 
political  rights,  it  did  not  avenge  the  poor.  It  is  now 
paying  for  that  connivance.”* 

Surely  the  Times  will  not  be  suspected  of  exaggeration 
in  its  censures  of  Irish  landlordism,  and  much  less  so  of 
English  government  in  Ireland.  Yet  it  so  depicts  one 
and  the  other,  the  immediate  culprit  and  the  equally 
guilty  accomplice,  as  to  justify  any  amount  of  resistance, 
in  any  feasible  way,  to  one  and  the  other. 

Some  eleven  years  later  down,  his  Grace  the  Most 
Rev.  Dr.  M‘Hale,  Archbishop  of  Tuam,  in  a  letter 
addressed  to  the  late  Lord  Palmerston,  complained  that 
“  not  only  did  all  these  evils  subsist  in  all  their  vigor,” 
but  that  “  they  were  even  aggravated  ;  and  that,  during 
the  last  three  years,  not  a  single  legislative  act  had  been 
passed  to  root  out  the  evil,  or  to  abate  its  violence.”! 

Yet,  in  the  words  of  a  real  philanthropist,  “  to  put  a 
stop  to  these  clearances,  which  inflict  more  misery 

THAN  AN  INVASION,  IS  TO  INTERFERE  WITH  THE  RIGHTS 
OF  PROPERTY  ”  ! 

In  this  landlord  sentiment  is  contained  the  very  essence 
of  the  land-evil  of  Ireland.  Dissipate  the  fundamental 
illusion  that  the  Creator  destined  the  landlord  as  exclu- 

*  Times,  Feb.  25th,  1847.  t  15th  Nov.,  1S5S. 

+  Sadleir,  “  Ireland,  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


277 


sively  entitled,  if  he  will,  to  profit  of  the  land ;  that  He 
created  the  land  solely  for  the  man  called  landlord,  and 
his,  “to  do  with  it  as  he  liked 3”  school  the  “proprietor” 
into  the  elementary  lesson  that  the  land  was  made  for 
all,  subject  to  the  operation  of  laws  meant  for  the  benefit 
of  all,  and  founded  on  the  immutable  truth  that  God  is 
no  exceptor  of  persons,  and  that  while  He  willed  that 
there  should  be  grades  in  society — some  richer,  some 
poorer,  some  great,  some  lowly,  some  powerful,  some 
weak — He  never  destined  that  the  rich,  the  great,  and 
the  powerful  should  use  their  wealth,  position,  and  power 
for  the  destruction  of  their  fellow-men,  as  dear  to  their 
common  Creator  (if  not  dearer  for  their  misery)  as  the 
highest  and  proudest  amongst  themselves. 

To  me  it  is  utterly  astounding  that  landlords  of  the 
Protestant  creed,  whom  I  must,  therefore,  according  to 
themselves,  call  “Biblical  landlords,”  should  rise  from 
the  perusal  of  their  Bible,  denouncing  woe  and  maledic¬ 
tion,  in  its  every  page,  on  the  oppressor  of  “  the  poor 
and  broken  of  heart,  to  put  them  to  death,”  and  yet 
sally  forth  with  “  notice  to  quit,”  ejectment  sheriff,  crow¬ 
bar  brigade,  police,  and  dragoons,  to  exterminate  their 
fellow  men,  whose  right,  before  High  Heaven,  to  “in¬ 
habit  the  land  ”  is  %s  original,  as  high,  and  as  sacred  as 
their  own.  Yet,  as  we  shall  see,  the  canting,  psalm¬ 
singing,  Bible-reading  Cromwellian,  was  almost  the  first  to 
inaugurate  the  reign  of  rack-renting,  extermination,  con¬ 
solidation,  and  all  manner  of  oppression  up  to  this  day. 

With  this  I  think  I  may  fairly  close  my  chapter  on 
“  Evictions  and  Consolidations,”  and  their  deplorable 
results ;  and  I  demand  how  long  is  such  unlimited, 
irresponsible,  power,  as  we  have  seen  thus  ruthlessly  exer¬ 
cised,  to  be  left  in  landlords’  hands'?  In  what  other 
country  under  heaven  would  it  be  tolerated,  not  as  it 
has  been  in  Ireland,  for  generations,  but  even  for  the 


278 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


space  of  a  single  year1?  And  are  we  rash  in  hoping  that 
another  year  will  not  have  elapsed  until  it  shall  be  swept 
away — for  ever  ? 

Else  are  we  driven  to  ash  : — 

r 

When  tyranny’s  pampered  and  pnrple-clad  minions 
Drive  forth  the  lone  widow  and  orphans  to  die, 

Shall  no  angel  of  vengeance  unfurl  his  red  pinions. 

And,  grasping  sharp  thunderbolts,  rush  from  on  high  ? 

“  Pity  !  oh,  pity  !  a  little  while  spare  me ; 

My  baby  is  sick — I  am  feeble  and  poor  ; 

In  the  cold  winter  blast,  from  my  hut  if  you  tear  me, 

My  lord,  we  must  die  on  the  desolate  moor.” 

’Tis  vain,  for  the  despot  replies  but  with  laughter, 

While  rudely  his  serfs  thrust  her  forth  on  the  wold  ; 

Her  cabin  is  blazing  from  threshold  to  rafter, 

And  she  crawls  o’er  the  mountain,  sick,  weeping,  and  cold. 

i 

Vainly  she  tries  in  her  bosom  to  cherish 

Her  sick  infant  boy,  ’mid  the  horrors  around, 

Till,  faint  and  despairing,  she  sees  her  babe  perish  ; 

Then  lifeless  she  sinks  on  the  snow-covered  ground. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


279 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

“  AGRARIAN  OUTRAGES.” 


.  .  .  .  “  Let  any  parent  make  the  case  his  own.  When  we  are  assembled  at 
the  domestic  hearth,  with  our  family  about  us,  let  us  bring  home  to  our  bosom 
the  bare  apprehension,  that  for  exercising  an  undoubted  privilege,  not  only  recog¬ 
nized  but  actually  enjoined  by  the  constitution,  it  were  in  the  power  of  some 
brutal  tyrant,  some  abortive,  stunted  upstart  of  yesterday,  of  whom  gold, 
amassed  by  peculation  and  public  plunder,  is  the  sole  nobility,  to  put  out  our 
fire,  and  drive  us  away  far  from  that  pleasant  home;  let  us  suppose  him,  by  the 
word  of  his  power,  destroying  our  only  means  of  providing  for  that  bright  and 
joyous  circle,  and  turning  our  children  and  ourselves  adrift  to  lead  a  vagrant, 
hopeless,  scrambling  life— disowned,  rejected,  persecuted,  and  maligned;  could 
we  bear  it?  Where  is  the  father’s  heart  that  could  endure  it?  What 
reverence  for  the  law,  what  sacredness  of  private  property,  what  abstract 
right  of  men  to  do  as  they  please  with  their  own,  would  be  of  force  to 
restrain  our  thoughts  from  dark  imaginings,  and  our  hands  from  giving 
them  effect?  We  frankly  avow  that  we  would  not  submit  to  such  treatment , 
but  would  take  the  law  into  our  own  hands ,  and,  if  possible,  redress  ourselves.  Our 
children  have  a  right  divine  to  claim  from  us  that  protection  which  may  be 
denied  to  them  elsewhere;  and  we  cannot  recognize  any  human  obligation  which 
should  or  could  constrain  us  to  reject  such  an  appeal.  No  man  owes  a  moral 
obligation  to  an  exterminating  decree.  No  man,  pretending  or  deserving  to  be 
free,  would  pay  it  an  outward  homage  one  moment  longer  than  superior  force 
compelled  him  to  bow  his  neck  under  its  intolerable  yoke.  These  are  our 
deliberate  sentiments — the  decisions  of  a  mind  tutored,  perhaps,  by  some  small 
share  of  philosophy,  and,  at.  all  events,  not  provoked  to  a  passionate  or  hasty 
judgment  by  the  sense  of  personal  wron gf— Dublin  Review ,  vol.  i.,  p.  479-SO. 


This,  no  doubt,  is  a  very  strong  passage,  especially 
as  coming  from  such  a  conservative  source,  and  “a 
mind,”  too,  “  tutored  by  some  small  share  of  philosophy,” 
nor  the  victim  himself  “  of  personal  wrong.”  And  yet, 
it  is  but  the  language  of  nature. 

Some  time  ago  I  was  at  dinner  with  a  pretty  exten¬ 
sive  Irish  land  owner,  himself  an  Englishman,  and,  having 


280 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


asked  him  to  picture  to  himself,  as  the  victim,  such  a 
scene  as  that  above-mentioned,  I  inquired  of  him  what 
would  he  do  in  such  a  case  ?  And  his  immediate  answer 
was,  “  I  would  shoot  the  landlord.” 

It  is,  no  doubt,  a  desperate  remedy  ;  nor  do  I  under¬ 
take  its  justification  or  palliation  any  further  than  by 
quoting  the  extract  reproduced.  As  a  mere  matter  of 
fact  there  is  no  “  law,”  no  legal  protection  whatsoever, 
for  the  unfortunate  millions  of  Irish  tenants-at-will, 
who  live,  or  rather  die  a  living  death,  at  the  whim  of 
a  ruthless  class,  whose  very  consciousness  of  the  whole¬ 
sale  crimes  on  which  their  territorial  titles  are  grounded, 
only  makes  them  more  inveterate  in  the  fiendish  exer¬ 
cise  of  the  unlimited  power  which  these  wicked  titles 
and  wicked  laws  confer. 

In  a  word,  the  Irish  landlord  and  tenant  live  in  a 
state  of  war — protracted  during  two  centuries.  The 
one  is  fortified  by  any  amount  of  iniquitous  statutes, 
all  in  open  violation  of  the  provisions  of  the  common 
law,  which  makes  depopulation  a  felony  f  while  the 
other  is  left  to  such  defence  acrainst  cruel  and  unmerited 

O 

aggression  as  the  instincts  of  nature  may  suggest.  If, 
in  the  words  of  Sir  John  Davies,  “in  the  time  of 
peace,  the  Irish  are  more  fearful  to  offend  the  law 
than  the  English  or  any  other  nation  whatsoever  ;”t  so, 
feeling  that  their  state  is  not  one  of  peace,  but  of  unjust 
and  cruel,  because  always  aggressive,  war,  aggravated  by 
every  circumstance  of  barbarity,  they  do  not  scruple 
having  recourse  to  a  kind  of  warlike  resistance  to 
maddening  wrong.  The  noble  conspirators  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  Revolution,  which  extinguished  a  royal  dynasty, 
had  not  a  tithe  of  the  provocations  which  have  daily 
invited  the  Irish  peasant  to  desperate  retaliation  these 

.  * 


Vide  supra. 


+  “Histor.  Tracts,”  p.  200. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


281 


hundred  years.  The  wonder  is,  that,  considering  the 
temptations  in  his  way,  the  latter  has  been  so  for¬ 
bearing.  Were  certain  Mayo  landlords  to  attempt 
their  brutal  pranks  anywhere  else  in  the  globe,  their 
life  were  not  worth  to  them  twenty-four  hours’ 
tenure. 

“  They  submit,”  says  the  Dublin  Review,  “  to  the  heart¬ 
less  resentment  of  landlords,  who  visit  them  with  con¬ 
fiscation  and  banishment  for  daring  to  assert  a  consti¬ 
tutional  right — a  right  as  clear  as  that  of  any  landlord 
to  his  estate.  They  look  with  wondrous  calmness  at 
their  wives  and  helpless  little  ones  driven  from  the 
shelter  of  a  crib,  which  humanity  would  weep  to  see 
closed  against  a  brute.  Nor  among  the  pitying  by¬ 
standers,  who  witness  those  scenes  of  barbarous  devas¬ 
tation,  does  even  one  hearty,  honest  curse,  such  as  ‘  the 
Recording  Angel  *  himself  might  not  wish  to  blot,  rise 
up  to  heaven  against  the  authors  of  so  much  misery. 
The  sentiment  of  commiseration  absorbs  every  other 
feeling.  .  .  . 

“  There  are,  indeed,  exceptions  to  this  general  rule  of 
patient  endurance.  Some  indignant  spirit  breaks  out 
occasionally  against  persecution;  and  those  wild  com¬ 
binations  which,  some  years  ago,  kept  the  whole  com¬ 
munity  and  government  in  terror,  can  yet  summon  their 
scattered  adherents  to  take  vengeance  for  oppression 

to  which  all  feel  they  are  subject . But,  in 

comparison  to  the  mass  of  suffering  which  is  unsparingly 
inflicted,  the  state  of  popular  feeling  in  Ireland  is 
quiescence  itself. . Compared  to  the  pro¬ 

vocations  they  receive,  we  say  that  the  blood  of  Irish¬ 
men  4  is  tame,  is  humble/  nor  is  there  any  other  people 
in  Europe  who  would  so  long  have  brooked  the  wrongs 
they  have  endured,  and  not  risen  up  in  a  simultaneous 
effort  to  shake  off  the  annoyance  of  such  puny  and  con- 


282 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


temptible  oppressors.”*  Yet,  if  a  heartless  depopulator 
meets  with  a  terrible  retribution  at  the  hands  of  an 

i 

outraged  parent,  or  the  child  of  outraged  parents,  the 
entire  press  of  England  and  the  West  British  Irish 
press  join  in  a  discordant  scream  of  “Irish  mur¬ 
derers,”  “agrarian  outrage,”  “blood-thirsty  ruffian” — 
never  bearing  in  mind  that  the  exterminator  was 
immeasurably  a  greater  criminal  than  the  assassin,  by 
his  heartless  cruelty  provoking  the  retaliation. 

Thus  far,  however,  we  have  seen  the  essential  cruelty 
and  the  direful  effects  to  the  evicted  of  these  evictions 
and  consolidations.  And  these  lead  us  on  in  natural 
order  to  consider  their  natural  result  in  what  are  called 
“  Agrarian  Outrages.” 

This  term  is,  by  a  perversity  of  nomenclature,  con¬ 
fined  to  the  “  outrages’-  committed  by  the  maddened 
tenant  on  the  author  of  his  ruin ;  while  the  not  less  (if 
not  more)  criminal  “  outrage”  and  iniquity  of  the  land¬ 
lord  against  the  tenant  goes  by  the  mild  name  of  the 
“  exercise  of  his  rights.” 

The  fact  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  the  relations  between 
landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland  are — a  state  of  war; 
“  the  relations,”  in  the  language  of  a  profound  writer, 
“  of  mutual  murder .”f  “  The  people,  who  committed 

no  offence,  except  that  of  coming  into  existence  at  the 
command  of  nature,  ARE  put  to  death,  wherever  it 
can  be  done,”  says  the  writer  in  the  Monthly  Chronicle 
already  quoted.  The  essential  difference  between  the 
landlord  murderer  and  the  tenant  assassin  is,  first, 
that  the  former,  by  regular  process  of  what  is  called 
law,  “  puts  to  death”  people  who  committed  no  offence  ; 
secondly,  he  thus  legally  murders  away  wholesale  ;  while 
the  unfortunate  tenant  flies  in  the  face  of  the  iniquitous 


*  Dublin  Review,  supra. 


t  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  EE  VOLUTION. 


283 


law,  and  strives  to  be  revenged,  at  a  single  stroke,  on  bis 
own,  and  the  murderer  of  his  wife  and  family. 

Similar  barbarous  excesses  produced,  as  we  have  just 
seen,  the  repeated  agrarian  organized  commotions  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  in  England.  In  Ireland 
they  have  had  an  equally  natural,  though  not  so  exten¬ 
sive  a  result.  I  am  far  from  meaning  to  apologize  fpr 
these  desperate  deeds,  two  of  which,  thus  provoked  in 
Queen’s  County  and  Galway,  have  so  recently  startled 
the  country.*  But  I  wish  to  be  impartial  in  my  distri¬ 
bution  of  blame;  and  I  now  again  repeat  it,  that  the  law, 
the  law-makers  (all  landlords,  be  it  ever  borne  in  mind), 
and  the  landlords,  are  far  more  criminal  in  provoking 
retaliation  for  cruel,  murderous  wrong,  than  the  dis¬ 
tracted  wretch  whom  territorial  savagery  has  driven  to 
desperation.  And  I  candidly  avow  I  feel  just  as  horrified 
when  I  hear  or  read  of  one  of  those  heartless,  heart¬ 
rending  eviction  scenes,  as  when,  next  week,  I  am  in¬ 
formed  that  the  exterminator  has  narrowly  escaped 
retribution.  I  am  satisfied  that  for  the  one  man  who 
sympathized  with  Mr.  Scully  on  the  occasion  of  the 
desperate  attack  made  on  him  last  year,  while,  surrounded 
by  police,  he  went  “  enforcing  his  rights,”  twenty  ex¬ 
tended  their  sympathy  to  the  destined  victims  of  his 
rapacity,  and  even  to  the  desperate  parties  who  had  well 
nigh  sent  him  to  a  premature  grave. 

“We  console  ourselves,”  says  a  writer  in  the  Quarterly 
Review,  “  with  the  epithet  1  agrarian.’  It  is,  indeed, 
undoubtedly  true  that  these  outrages  are  connected  with 
the  possession  of  land ;  that  land  is  of  the  utmost  im¬ 
portance  to  the  Irish  peasant ;  that  his  living  depends 
ON  IT ;  and  that  when  he  is  threatened  with  STARVATION 

\ 

*  A  third,  that  of  Mr.  Hunter,  has  since  occurred  near  New¬ 
port,  in  this  county.  See  Appendix. 


284 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


by  EJECTMENT  of  any  kind,  violence  MIGHT  WELL  BE 
expected.”*  And,  again,  “  Let  us  not  be  supposed  to 
remedy  the  evil  of  a  surplus  population,  accumulated  on 
the  estates  through  the  negligence  of  the  landlords,  by 
turning  the  miserable  paupers  into  the  roads  and  ditches. 
Over-population  is  a  great  evil,  but  if  such  steps  should 
be  taken  to  cure  it,  Ireland  can  expect  nothing  but  a 
more  awful  curse  and  a  heavier  vengeance.”+ 

I  take  the  following  statement  from  a  treatise  entitled 
“  Ireland  as  it  Was  — 

“  And  to  their  harshness  as  landlords,  their  predilec¬ 
tions  as  magistrates,  their  strong  political  feeling  and 
bigoted  tendencies,  are  ascribable  those  dreadful  outrages 
occasionally  perpetrated  by  unthinking  wretches,  who,  in 
the  madness  of  despair,  combine  in  murderous  and  de¬ 
vastating  associations. Comment  on  such  evidence 
from  such  a  quarter  were  superfluous. 

The  following  evidence,  furnished  to  the  committee  of 
1839,  will  show  the  intimate  and  essential  connection 
between  the  eviction  of  the  tenant  and  the  assassination 
of  the  landlord  :§ — 

“  Captain  Warburton  (a  resident  magistrate)  said  the 
murders  and  outrages  that  have  happened  lately  in 
Galway  have  risen  from  disputes  about  land. .  The  prin¬ 
cipal  and  primary  object  of  all  associations  among  the 
'peasantry  is  the  taking  and  keeping  of  land.  ‘  I  am  not 
aware  of  any  conspiracy  among  the  peasantry  of  Ireland 
not  immediately  connected  with  land.'  ”|| 

Fenianism  had  not  then  made  its  appearance;  but  had 
the  land  question  been  settled,  Fenianism  had  never 
“  startled  us  out  of  our  propriety.” 

*  Quarterly  Review,  Dec.,  1S40.  t  Ibid. 

t  “Stanley  Com.  on  Ireland,”  p.  132.  “Ireland  as  it  Was,”  p.  91. 

§  See  Dublin  Review,  vol.  x. 

II  Com.  of  1839,  qq.  9,379  to  9,421,  9,3S2. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


285 


No  wonder,  indeed,  when,  in  the  vTords  of  Black- 
burne,  “  land  to  the  Irish  peasant  is  a  necessary  of 
life.”* 

Captain  Warburton  further  says  that  “  the  threatening 
notices  lately  served  upon  the  farmers  in  the  county  of 
Clare  were  produced  by  the  anxiety  of  the  poor  people  to 
get  conacre.  And  the  late  outrages  in  Clare  have  been  put 
an  end  to  by  giving  the  people  some  ground  for  potatoes.” + 

Mr.  Barrington  says  :  “  The  general  cause  of  outrages 
at  all  times  in  Ireland  is  anxiety  to  possess  land  ;  such 
has  been  the  case  since  1761.  Whilst  I  have  been  crown 
solicitor  (for  five  and  twenty  years)  I  could  trace  almost 
every  outrage  to  some  dispute  about  Tand”% 

“  Colonel  Shaw  Kennedy  says  the  great  ground¬ 
work  of  all  Whiteboy  ofiences  is  connected  with  land. 
Whatever  affects  the  tenancy  of  land  will  also  affect 
crime.”§ 

“  Mr.  Howley  (late  Serjeant)  says  that,  from  conferences 
with  other  barristers,  it  appears  that  ejectments  at  ses¬ 
sions  are  more  numerous  in  Tipperary  than  in  any  other 
county,  and  that  he  himself  has  had  more  than  1 50  at 
one  session.  There  are  also  a  great  many  ejectments 
brought  in  the  superior  courts.’ j|  (And,  accordingly, 
they  shot  down  the  landlords  in  Tipperary  into  terrified 
submission.) 

“  Mr.  Piers  Gale  says  that  outrage  has  almost  always 
a  connection  with  land,^T  and  also  that  if  a  man  is  de¬ 
prived  of  his  land,  he  has  little  to  depend  upon, 
and  is,  therefore,  extremely  reluctant  to  leave  the 
ground .  and  indignant  at  any  person  that  takes  it  over 
his  head."** 

*  Above.  II  Ibid.  qq.  266,  2S2-6-91. 

t  Com.  of  1839,  qq.  7,636,  7,343.  H  Ibid.  q.  8,605. 

t  Ibid. qq. 7, 346-7.  .  **  Ibid.  q.  8, 605. 

§  Ibid.  qq.  9,991-2-7. 


286 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Mr.  Kemmis  says  that  “  the  great  majority  of  violent 
crimes  in  Tipperary  are  produced  by  turning  tenants  out 
of  possession — three-fourths,  or  more.”* 

And  I  may  here  interpose  that  these  Tipperary 
clearances  were  the  fans  and  origo  of  that  Tipperary 
tradition,  as  much  alive  to-day  as  it  was  thirty  years 
ago — the  life  of  the  evicting  landlord  for  that  of  the 
evicted  family. 

“Major  Warburton  says,  the  destitution  produced  by 
turning  persons  out  of  their  land ,  when  they  have  no  other 
means  of  existence,  is  a  very  great  source  of  crime,  as  such 
a  state  of  things  must  naturally  involve  the  people  in 
criminal  endeavors  to  procure  the  means  of  maintaining 
their  families.”  f 

And  again,  “  That  such  a  state  of  things  must  neces¬ 
sarily  involve  people  in  crime,  when  they  are  reduced  to 
destitution  by  being  turned  out  of  their  lands  without 
having  any  means  of  subsistence.”  He  also  states  that 
“  the  causes  which  produce  crime  and  outrage  at  present, 
are  the  same  causes  which,  for  many  years  back,  have 
produced  the  same  results. 

“  Mr.  Tomkins  Brew  says,  the  cause  of  Terryaltism  in 
Clare  was  the  tenants  receiving  ‘  notice  to  quit  f  that  the 
people  of  Clare  are,  in  many  districts,  in  a  state  of  great 
destitution,  and  likely  to  be  worse  next  year  ;  that  the  at¬ 
tacks  on  houses  in  Clare,  in  1837,  proceeded  from  the 
scarcity  of  provisions — when  a  supply  came  the  outrages 
all  ceased.”§ 

“  Mr.  Tabiteau  says  that  there  is  great  destitution  in 
his  district  (Tipperary) ;  that  the  disturbances  mostly 
prevail  during  the  season  when  there  is  no  employment ; 
that  when  they  have  no  employment  they  have  nothing 


*  Com.,  7,149-67  ;  434-5-6. 
t  Ibid.,  1,272. 


t  Ibkl.,  1,266-7-8. 

§  Ibid.,  12,715  ;  12,726  ;  13,048. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


287 


to  depend  upon,  unless  they  can  get  a  bit  of  ground ;  and 
that  something  about  land  is  the  cause  of  all  the  murders 
committed  there.”*  Also — “  that  ejectment  is  synony¬ 
mous  with  reducing  the  cottier  to  destitution  and 
misery .”+ 

“Sir  William  Somerville  says  that  the  only  violent 
outrage  he  can  recollect  in  Meath  for  three  or  four  years 
is  the  murder  of  Mr.  Hatch,  which  was  committed  ‘  for 
the  old  cause  of  ejectment ,’  he  having  turned  out  a 
tenant. 

“  Mr.  Matthew  Barrington  says,  the  actual  existence  of 
the  peasantry  depends  upon  their  having  land  ;  and  the 
whole  disturbances  of  the  country  are  produced  by  a  desire 
to  possess  it.”§ 

“  Mr.  William  Kemmis  (above  cited)  is  crown  solicitor 
for  the  Leinster  circuit,  which  includes  Tipperary.  He 
is  also  crown  solicitor  for  the  county  and  city  of  Dublin. 
He  is  also  the  solicitor  to  the  Treasury  in  Ireland.  He  has 
held  all  the  offices  for  the  same  time — namely,  eight-and- 
thirty  years ;  and  he  succeeded  his  father,  who  was 
crown  solicitor  for  all  Ireland.  He  states  that  for  these 
eight-and-thirty  years  he  has  not  missed  a  circuit ;  and, 
from  the  circumstances  above  enumerated,  we  suppose  it 
will  be  easily  taken  for  granted  that  he  is  in  principle  a 
Conservative  at  the  least,  and  can  have  no  want  of  sym¬ 
pathy  with  the  landlords  of  Tipperary.  How,  this  gen¬ 
tleman  states,  ||  “  that  three-fourths ,  or  more,  of  the  crimes 
tommitted  in  Tipperary  are  produced  by  the  landlords 
TURNING  THE  TENANTS  OUT  OF  POSSESSION.’  If  there  be 
any  truth  in  the  general  accounts  which  we  see  and  hear 
of  the  amount  of  crime  in  that  county,  we  can  easily 

&  Jt  *  |  ■  *  •  *  * 1  ,  /  s 

•  *•  Ml  '  ■  /  d&S  .  .  s 

*  Com.  9,735,  9,914,  9,739,  9,746.  §  Roden  Committee,  764. 

t  Ibid.,  9,  720.  ||  “Abstract,”  page  9. 

%Ibid.,  14,591. 


288 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


judge  of  the  extent  of  the  cause  from  the  extent  of  the 
effect — of  the  amount  of  ejectments  from  the  amount  of 
outrages. 

“  Lord  Powerscourt  gives  us,  in  page  127  of  his 
pamphlet,*  the  following  extract  of  a  speech  deli¬ 
vered  by  the  Very  Pev.  Mr.  Laffan,  at  a  dinner  in 
Thurles,  where  Lord  Lismore  presided,  in  November, 
1838 

“  ‘  There  is  no  man  who  abhors  the  crime  of  murder 
more  than  I  do  ;  but  I  know  that  these  murders  and  out¬ 
rages  are  the  offspring  of  oppression.  I  can  tell  your 
lordship  that  there  are  savages  in  broadcloth  as  well  as 
in  frieze.  It  may  not  be  believed  by  men  like  your 
lordship,  who  have  kindly  hearts  in  their  bosoms ;  but 
what  would  your  lordship  think  of  the  man  that  -would 
go  to  the  cabin  and  turn  out  a  woman  who  teas  on 
the  eve  of  childbirth,  and  ivho  afterwards  was  de¬ 
livered  in  THE  OPEN  AIR 'l  Wliat ,  my  lord ,  must 
be  the  feelings  of  the  husband  of  that  poor  ivoman  ?■  Such 
scenes,  my  lord,  are  not  of  unfrequent  occurrence  in 
this  county 

“  This  statement  was  addressed,  at  a  public  meeting  in 
Tipperary,  to  a  landlord  residing  in  that  county,  who 
must  be  taken  to  have  assented  to  the  truth  of  the  asser¬ 
tion,  and  who  probably  had  cognizance  of  the  fact ;  whilst 
Lord  Powerscourt  himself  does  not  go  through  even  the 
form  of  expressing  his  own  disbelief  in  the  correctness  of 
the  statement.  • 

“  Mr.  Drummond  says  £  the  subdivision  of  land  no  longer 
proceeds  as  heretofore  ;  it  is  now  checked,  and  a  contrary 
process  is  taking  place  by  the  enlargement  and  consolida¬ 
tion  of  farms,  while  the  population,  which  depends  upon 
the  land  alone  for  support,  is  still  increasing.  The  demand 

*  “The  Merits  of  the  Whigs.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


289 


for  land  is  consequently,  and  of  necessity,  greater  than 
it  teas  before ;  while  there  is  a  decrease  in  the  supply 
of  it,  arising  from  the  consolidation  of  farms.  In  a 
former  answer  I  alluded  to  that  circumstance  with  re¬ 
ference  to  the  state  of  crime,  showing  that  a  great  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  violent  infractions  of  the  law  prevalent  proceeded 
from  this  class ,  and  that,  as  long  as  from  any  cause  there 
is  increasing  destitution,  there  will,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
he  increasing  crime.’  ”* 

“  Judge  -Moore  says  that  the  outrages  in  Clare, 
Galway,  and  Limerick,  in  1830  and  1831,  arose  from  the 
pressure  on  the  lower  orders  by  the  extreme  price  of 
potato  land.  The  people  turned  up  the  green  ground  in 
order  to  increase  the  quantity  and  diminish  the  price  of 
potato  ground”] 

“  Mr.  Sylvanus  Jones  says  that  the  outrages  committed 
in  Wexford,  lately,  have  been  the  result  of  persons 
taking  the  land  over  the  heads  of  others.*  ‘Outrage  has 
almost  always  a  connection  with  land.  If  a  poor  man  is 
deprived  of  his  land  he  has  little  to  depend  upon,  and  is, 
therefore,  extremely  reluctant  to  leave  the  ground,  and 
indignant  at  any  person  that  takes  it  over  his  head.’  ”§ 

“  The  two  great  causes  of  outrage  are  faction  fights 
and  disputes  about  land.”|| 

“In  Roscommon,  Leitrim,  and  Sligo,  the  outrages 
arise  from  taking  the  land.”*!! 

And  finally,  “Mr.  Barnes  (another  resident  magistrate) 
says  that  the  murders  in  Longford  were  the  conse¬ 
quence  of  people  being  turned  off  their  land  and  stran¬ 
gers  put  in.”** 

*Com.  14,024.  f  Ibid.  14,375,  14,379. 

J  Ibid.  14,475.  §  Ibid.  8,605. 

||  Ibid.  Mr.  Seed,  10,736. 

f  Ibid.  Mr.  Hickman,  8,331-2-3-4,  8,605. 

**  Ibid.  11,755-6-8 — Vide  Dublin  Review,  vol.  x. 


T 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


2(J0 

I  think  no  evidence  could  be  more  overwhelming  than 
the  foregoing,  as  bringing  home  to  the  door  of  the  land¬ 
lords  all  the  responsibility  of  those  “  agrarian  outrages,” 
so  much  so  that  not  alone  “murderer,”  “assassin,”  but 
also  “  suicide,”  might  be  branded  on  the  brow  of  every 
exterminator  in  the  land.  He  tempts  poor,  weak,  human 
nature  beyond  endurance ;  and  whenever  he  pays  the 
penalty  in  maiming  or  death,  he  only  reaps  the  fruit  of 
iiis  own  previous  “  agrarian  outrage.” 

“  There  is  no  man,”  says  Father  Laffap,  “  abhors 
the  crime  of  murder  more  than  I  do,  but  I  know  that 
those  murders  and  outrages  are  the  offspring  of  op¬ 
pression.” 

“  What,”  asked  Judge  Fletcher,  “  is  the  wretched 
peasant  to  do  1  Hunted  from  the  spot  where  he  had 
first  drawn  his  breath — where  he  had  first  seen  the  light 
of  heaven — incapable  of  procuring  any  other  means  of 
subsistence — can  we  be  surprised  that,  being  of  unen¬ 
lightened  and  uneducated  habits,  he  should  rush  upon 
the  perpetration  of  crimes  followed  by  the  punishment  of 
the  rope  and  the  gibbet  1  Nothing  remains  for  them, 

THUS  HARASSED,  THUS  DESTITUTE,  BUT  WITH  A  STRONG 
HAND  to  deter  the  stranger  from  intruding  upon  their 
farms,  and  to  extort  from  the  weakness  of  their  landlords 
— from  whose  gratitude  and  good  feelings  they  have 
failed  to  win  it — a  sort  of  a  preference  for  the  ancient 
tenantry.”* 

Coming  from  any  man,  but  especially  a  judge  of  the 
land,  this  is  emphatic  language — almost  apologetic  of 
those  “  crimes  ”  which  it  deplores.  The  sentiment  has 
been  before  the  country  for  so  many  years,  and  yet  not 
one  that  I  know  has  attempted  to  question  its  confor- 

*  Charge  to  the  Grand  Jury  of  county  Waterford,  July,  1S14, 
“Pamphleteer,”  iv.,  p.  7So. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


291 


mity  with  the  eternal  principle  of  self-preservation.  It 
is,  I  presume,  on  that  principle  that  Mr.  John  Mitchel 
positively  defends,  at  this  hour,  the  slaying  of  extermi¬ 
nating  landlords.  Abhorring  assassination,  as  every  man 
of  moral  principle  must  abhor  it,  he  still  regards  the 
landlords  and  tenants  of  Ireland  as  in  a  state  of  war. 
The  former,  who  are  the  few,  ara technically  sustained  by 
what  they  themselves  call  law,  what  common  sense — a 
sense  of  common  right  and  justice — must  ever  charac¬ 
terize  as  iniquity.  The  others  are  abandoned  to  the  un¬ 
ruly  will  and  selfish  passions  of  these  favored  few.  The 
one  are  “  hedged  in  ”  by  a  hundred  and  one  provisions  of 
a  positive  iniquitous  code ;  the  others  are,  in  plain  terms, 
placed  without  the  pale  of  protection.  Where,  then,  are 
these  latter  to  seek  protection  or  redress  for  maddening 
wrong  1  Not  from  the  law,  which  legalizes  the  wrong. 
Not  from  opinion,  which  has  hitherto  been  expressed 
only  by  the  mouthpieces  of  the  law-makers  ;  therefore, 
only  from  themselves,  according  to  the  dictates  of  that 
immutable  principle : — 

% 

“  Vim  vi  repellere  licet.” 

“  Force  may  be  repulsed  by  force.” 

I  cannot  forbear  adding  the  following  sensible  extract 
from  the  Dublin  Review  quoted  above : — 

“The  persecutors  and  slanderers  of  this  people  talk 
of  their  untamable,  fierce,  and  vindictive  nature.  But, 
if  they  believed  what  they  say,  would  they  dare  to 
oppress  and  to  harass  them  as  they  do1?  Would  they 
expel  fathers,  mothers,  infants  at  the  breast,  and  tot¬ 
tering  age,  if  they  really  thought  that  blood  alone  could 
slake  the  burning  heart  of  a  ruined  Irish  peasant  %  No ! 
Too  well  we  know  that  these  domestic  tyrants  are  inacces¬ 
sible  to  pity.  No  sentiment  of  kindness,  no  horror  of 


292 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  calamities  meditated  against  their  fellow-creatures, 
fellow-countrymen,  and  fellow-Christians,  can  make  them 
relax  their  stern  code  of  proscription.  But  they  are 
not  reckless  of  their  own  safety.  Dogged  and  perverse 
though  they  he,  an  unfeigned  apprehension  of  conse¬ 
quences  to  themselves — consequences  which  would  seem 
to  be  inevitable  were  the  Irish  peasant  the  tiger  which 
their  invention  would  paint  him — would  restrain  the 
arm  which  pity  clasps  in  vain.  Fear  and  prudence 
would  operate  where  nature  is  rudely  thrust  aside,  and 
the  intercession  of  Christian  charity,  like  its  Sacred 
Author,  is  mocked,  reviled,  and  spat  upon.  But  the 
persecution  goes  on.  Never  before  was  it  more  im- 
mitigably  active;  and  yet  its  authors  walk  abroad, 
unhurt  by  any  lash,  unless  conscience,  unseen,  and  in 
its  own  secret  hour,  may  apply  its  scorpions  to  their 
soul.”* 

u  Conscience,”  indeed,  in  a  veritable  Irish  landlord  ! 
"  Conscience”  in  a  wolf  among  a  flock  of  lambs  !  “  Con¬ 

science,”  to  descend  even  lower  for  a  more  appropriate 
illustration,  in  a  “  ‘  Dog  Billy  ’  devastating  a  pit  of  rats !” 
Such  is  the  conscience  of  an  Irish  exterminator — never 
touched  till,  with  the  echo  of  that  deadly  musket  shot, 
it  awakes  in  another  world,  to  see  and  vainly  lament  all 
the  atrocities  of  which  it  had  been  in  life  the  unheed¬ 
ing,  unfeeling  author. 

Again,  three  years  later  down,  commenting  on  Mr. 
Smith  O’Brien’s  famous  speech  in  the  House  of  Com¬ 
mons  on  “the  causes  of  discontent  in  Ireland,”!  the 
same  philosophic  authority  says  :  “  The  most  imme¬ 
diately  important  and  most  painfully  interesting  topic 
which  Mr.  O’Brien  dealt  with  was,  undoubtedly,  that 
which  occupied  the  greater  portion  of  the  last  extract 


*  Dublin  Review. 


f  4th  July  1843. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


293 


which  we  have  made  from  him.  We  allude  to  the  rela¬ 
tions  between  landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland.  There 
is  no  other  name  for  them  but  that  they  are  relations 
of  mutual  murder  !  Let  all  that  is  mean ,  cruel,  unfair, 
unjust,  tyrannous ,  and  to  the  tenant  ruinous  in  the  conduct 
of  a  landlord,  be  conceived  on  the  one  hand,  and  some 
idea  may  be  formed  of  what  is  the  rule,  not  the  excep¬ 
tion,  in  the  conduct  of  Irish  landlords  and  their  stony¬ 
hearted  agents.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  submis¬ 
sion  for  awhile,  and,  in  many  cases,  submission  to  the 
last,  on  the  part  of  the  tenant.  In  thousands  of  cases,  when 
the  native  of  other  countries  would  be  driven  to  the 
utmost  ferocity  of  desperation  by  seeing  himself  ruined, 
expelled  from  his  cabin,  and  left  with  his  sick  wife  and 
perishing  children  houseless  and  penniless  on  the  bleak 
roadside,  the  Irish  peasant,  influenced  by  his  religion, 
has  been  known  to  endure  and  not  turn  on  his  ruthless 
and  fiendish  oppressor  and  destroyer.  Not  a  word  is  said 
of  these  cases ;  though  to  them  the  cases  of  retaliatory 

murder  are  not  as  one  to  five  thousand . Instead  of 

wondering  at  their  occurrence,  he  who  is  acquainted  with 
the  conduct  of  the  bulk  of  the  landlords  of  Ireland  will 
far  more  wonder  that  these  horrible  crimes  are  not  heard  of 
every  day. 

“  The  mind  revolts  from  saying  anything  that  would 
appear  to  be  an  attempt  at  extenuating  these  horrible 
mutual  murders  between  the  owners  and  occupiers  of 
land  in  our  unhappy  country.  And  yet  the  interests  of 
truth  demand  that,  to  enable  a  right  judgment  to  be 
formed  of  the  nature  of  these  crimes,  one  perilous  incen¬ 
tive  or  temptation  towards  them,  supplied  by  extraneous 
causes,  should  be  noticed.”* 

In  other  words,  as  long  as  Irish  landlords  evict,  or 


*  Dublin  Review,  D^c.,  1843. 


294 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


have  the  power  to '  evict,  without  cause  or  justice,  Irish 
tenants,  possessed  of  the  instincts  of  human  nature  as 
they  are,  will  infallibly  slay  these  Irish  landlords.  I  know 
at  this  moment  men — mere  peasants,  “  uneducated,”  if 
you  will,  but  yet  honest,  upright,  and  industrious ;  nay, 
even  what  might  be  called  religious  men — who,  if  they 
were  evicted,  or  seriously  threatened  with  eviction, 
would  face  death  in  all  its  horrors  to  be  avenged.  And 
the  same  “interests  of  truth”  that  inspired  the  writer 
above  quoted  to  “  notice  the  incentives  and  temptations” 
to  agrarian  crime  of  one  class  supplied  by  no  less  culpa¬ 
ble  agrarian  crime  of  another,  impels  me  to  declare  my 
conviction  that  never  was  the  resolve  of  self-defence  more 
settled  in  the  people’s  breasts  throughout  Ireland  than  it 
is  at  present.  When  the  news  of  the  daring  noonday 
attempt  on  Captain  Lambert  reached  Galway,  what  was 
the  first  remark  of  a  man  who  heard  it?  “  Thank  God,” 
cried  he,  “  it  has  crossed  the  Shannon  at  last.”*  It  has 
crossed  the  Shannon,  and,  rinderpest-like,  if  it  once  take 
root,  it  may  become  contagious.  I  have  serious  appre¬ 
hensions  that  if  one  Mayo  exterminator  and  despot  were 
to  fall,  many  more  of  his  class  would  soon  follow  in  his 
wake.  Let  the  truth  be  spoken  at  any  cost,  not  by  way 
of  menace,  but  by  way  of  wholesome  warning.  Crime, 
it  is  remarked,  is  contagious.  Whenever  a  crime  of  a 
certain  hue  of  atrocity  is  committed  in  England,  several 
more  of  the  same  class  are  pretty  sure  to  follow  in  its 
wake.  Would  it  not  be  wise  to  remove  the  tempting 
cause  of  Irish  agrarian  outrage  ?  With  far  less  cause  the 
free  people  of  America  do  not  hesitate  to  take,  not  merely 
the  life  of  the  owner  of  property  claiming  his  own,  but 
even  that  of  the  officer  of  the  law  employed  in  its 
execution. 


*  It  has  crossed  to  Western  Mayo  since. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


295 


The  following  extract  pretty  clearly  and  painfully 
demonstrates  this  : — 

“  Albany,  July  26. — This  afternoon  Deputy- Sheriff 
Gregg,  of  Rensselaer  county,  with  a  posse  numbering 
twenty  men,  went  to  the  residence  of  a  farmer  named 
Dennison,  in  East  Greenbush,  to  levy  on  his  goods  for 
non-payment  of  rent.  On  reaching  the  place  they  found 
gathered  about  the  premises  about  forty  men.  Not 
expecting  any  trouble,  the  sheriff  proceeded  in  the  dis¬ 
charge  of  his  duty ;  but  was  obstructed  by  the  owner  of 
the  property.  The  sheriff  then  attempted  to  take  Den¬ 
nison  into  custody,  but  the  crowd  opened  fire  upon  the 
posse  with  guns  and  pistols,  when  Sheriff  Gregg  was,  it 
is  feared,  mortally,  and  Leonard  J.  Wilbeck  and  Mr. 
Woods  seriously  wounded.  The  sheriff’s  posse  then 
made  a  hasty  retreat.  It  was  reported  that  five  of  the 
posse  were  wounded,  but  the  above  are  the  only  names 
given.”*  , 

In  Dundee,  a  short  time  ago,  a  woman  flung  a  bottle 
of  vitriol  in  the  face  of  the  sheriff’s  man  who  came  to 
evict  her  for  non-payment  of  rent.  Were  she  Irish  she 
would  be  called  “  savage”  for  the  deed. 

Mr.  Binn,  already  referred  to,  goes  somewhat  farther 
than  the  previous  writer,  and  discovers  causes  not  alone 
to  palliate,  but  to  justify,  those  terrible  retributions. 

“  If,”  said  he,  “  the  outrages  committed  by  the  Irish 
people  are  incapable  of  vindication,  facts  and  circum¬ 
stances  may,  at  least,  be  produced  in  extenuation.  On 
impartial  consideration,  it  will  be  apparent  that  the  very 
worst  are  certainly  not  more  cruel  and  vindictive  than 
any  other  people  under  similar  treatment ;  and  the  out¬ 
rages  of  which  they  were  guilty  were,  in  fact,  for  the 
most  part,  the  natural  growth  of  the  policy  adopted 

*  New  York  Tribune,  July  27,  1869. 


2  ;  6  THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

towards  them.  We  often  heard,  for  instance,  of  murders 
being  perpetrated  upon  such  as  took  land  from  which 
others  have  been  ejected ;  and  it  is  possible  that  English¬ 
men,  knowing  that  similar  effects  do  not  follow  from 
similar  causes  in  this  country  (England),  may  be  disposed 
to  consider  a  case  clearly  made  out  against  the  Irish. 
Between  the  respective  systems  of  taking  land  in  Eng¬ 
land  and  Ireland  there  is  this  material  difference,  how¬ 
ever — so  material  as  to  render  any  analogy  that  may  be 
drawn  a  very  imperfect  and  fallacious  mode  of  reasoning. 
An  English  farmer,  when,  ejected,  having  little  or  no  diffi¬ 
culty  in  getting  another  farm,  has  nothing  to  dread.  In 
Ireland,  when  a  man  is  ejected  it  is  next  to  impossible 

for  him  to  find  a  farm  at  liberty . In  this  manner 

great  numbers  have  been  turned  adrift — not  because 
of  arrear  of  rent — not  because  they  had  transgressed  the 
rules  of  their  lease — but,  simply,  because  they  happened 
to  possess  a  religious  or  political  creed  at  variance  with 
that  of  a  capricious  landlord.  It  cannot  certainly  be 
denied  that,  systematically  and  wickedly  oppressed  as 
the  Irjsh  laborers  are,  to  rise  in  self-defence  is  at  least  a 
NATURAL  course  of  proceeding,  however  fearful  in  its  con¬ 
sequences . Outrages  thus  caused  are  frequently  mis 

represented,  for  the  very  worst  of  purposes,  as  arising  out 
of  political  or  religious  animosities ;  and  hence  it  is  that  in 
the  minds  of  those  unacquainted  with  the  peculiar  condition 
and  circumstances  of  the  country,  prejudices,  more  easily 
rooted  than  removed,  are  established  against  the  religion 
and  politics  thus  stigmatized  and  calumniated.”* 

Elsewhere  he  goes  much  farther,  as  we  have  seen, — 
when  he  declares  that  “  the  -wrongs  which  they  (the  Irish 
tenants)  have  endured,  &c.,  &c.,  would  have  justified 
(not  merely  “  palliated  ”)  a  course  of  conduct  (even)  in- 


*  “  Miseries  and  Beauties,”  &c.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  419,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


297 


comparably  more  violent  than  any  which  Ireland,  in  her 
■wildest  moments,  in  her  fiercest  paroxysms  of  excitement, 
has  displayed.”* 

Mr.  Pirn,  now  M.P.  for  Dublin,  while  he  guards  against 
either  “  extenuation  ”  or  “  palliation  ”  of  those  outrages, 
hesitates  not,  however,  to  point  out  the  causes  and  to 
censure  the  laws  in  which  they  find  their  origin.  “  Ex¬ 
perience,”  says  he,  “  has  abundantly  shown  that  it  is  not 
sufficient  to  endeavor  to  repress  crime  by  the  terrors  of 
the  law ;  it  is  also  necessary  to  search  out  the  proximate 
and  remote  causes,  and,  by  removing  the  temptation  to 
crime,  to  diminish  the  amount.  Far  be  it  from  us  to 
extenuate  the  enormity  or  to  palliate  the  guilt  of  these 
dreadful  outrages ;  yet  they  have  exciting  causes  which, 
if  possible,  should  be  removed.  The  objects  of  these 
agrarian  disturbances  are  various,  but  they  always  imply 
a  contest  between  the  landlords  and  tenants — whether 
to  obtain  the  possession  of  land,  to  prevent  ejectment, 
to  obtain  a  reduction,  to  prevent  an  advance  in  rents, 

or  from  vindictive  motives . We  are  convinced 

that  if  a  good  system  of  laws  for  the  regulation  of  real 
property  had  existed,  so  large  an  amount  of  agrarian 
crime  would  never  have  disgraced  our  country.”f  Thus 
do  we  find  the  Conservative  Catholic  and  the  Liberal 
Protestant  periodicals,  the  foremost  of  their  class,  concur 
with  the  temperate  Quaker — himself  a  large  and  excellent 
landed  proprietor — in  their  estimate  of  the  causes  and 
the  remedy  of  these  deplorable  explosions. 

“  This  law” — the  Irish  land  law  of  eviction,  rack-rents, 
absenteeism,  &c. — says  another  ultra-Tory  periodical,  the 
Quarterly  Review,  which  we  quote  elsewhere ;  “  this  law 

*  Supra  (vol.  ii.  p.  414). 

t  “  Transactions  of  the  Central  Relief  Committee  of  the  Society 
of  Friends,”  &c.,  p.  126. 


298 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


we  expect  this  unhappy  papulation  to  cherish,  venerate,  and 
implicitly  obey  !  Shame  !  Shame  !  !  ”* 

“  More  misery,”  says  tlie  Times,  “  is  crowded  into  a 
single  province  in  Ireland  than  can  be  found  in  all  the 
rest  of  Europe  put  together.  To  this  pass  are  things 
come  :  in  order  to  benefit  a  small  knot  of  haughty,  un¬ 
feeling,  rapacious  landlords,  the  well-being  of  millions  is 
disregarded,  famine  and  misery  stalk  through  the  land, 
and  all  good  government  in  Ireland  is  rendered  impos¬ 
sible,  and  government  of  any  kind  impracticable,  except 
through  the  medium  of  a  military  force.”+ 

Yes.  Those  thirty  thousand  bayonets  that  keep  the 
peasantry  of  Ireland  in  sullen  subjection  might  be  spared 
for  better  purposes,  were  the  foreign  landlords,  in  a  foreign 
parliament,  to  cease  making  our  laws,  and,  by  means 
of  those  laws,  exterminating  our  people.  “  Coercion 
Acts,”  “  Arms  Bills,”  “  Suspension  of  Habeas  Corpus 
Acts,”  “  Arms  Acts,”  “  Martial  Law,”  “  Insurrection 
Acts,”  “  Crime  and  Outrage  Acts,”  “  Peace  Preservation 
Acts,” — such  might  be  fairly  called  the  headings  of  Eng¬ 
lish  legislation  for  Ireland  for  the  last  sixty-nine  years — 
in  1801,  1804,  1807,  1810, 1814,  1815,  1816, 1817,  1822, 
1823,  1824,  1825,  1833,  1834,  1839,  1842,  1848,  1849, 
1852,  1854,  1855,  1856,  1858,  1860,  1862,  1866,  1867, 
1868 — that  is,  on  an  average,  a  coercion  act  for  Ireland 
every  second  year  since  the  day  of  the  “accursed Union,” 
and  all  this  by  and  for  the  sake  of  the  landlords  ! !.{ 

May  we  not  justly  repeat  to-day  the  language  of  Earl 

*  December,  1835.  f  25th  of  October,  1839. 

4  At  this  moment  there  is  a  fresh  howl  raised  by  the  press  of 
England  for  more  coercion,  through  the  suspension  of  the  Habeas 
Corpus  Act,  in  consequence  of  the  return  of  Jeremiah  O’Donovan 
Rossa— a  political  convict  for  life — as  M.P.  for  Tipperary.  And 
yet  this  fresh  piece  of  threatened  coercion  will  prove  as  fruitless 
as  auy  of  its  numberless  predecessors. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


209 


Grey  in  1846  :  “It  is  time  to  have  done  with  coercion. 
Ireland  has  been  misgoverned.  There  had  been  too  many 
Arms  Acts  and  Curfew  Acts.  It  was  justice  that  was 
•wanted  now.”*  And  may  we  not  ask  to-day,  in  the 
words  of  Sadleir  thirty  years  ago  :  “  Is  a  system  which 
can  only  be  supported  by  brute  force,  and  which  is  kept 
up  by  constant  blood-shedding,  to  be  perpetuated  foi 
ever  %  Are  we  still  to  garrison  a  country  to  protect  the 
property  of  those  whose  conduct  occasions  all  the  evils  under 
which  the  country  has  groaned  for  centuries — property  that 
would  not  be  worth  a  day’s  purchase  were  the  proprie¬ 
tors  its  sole  protectors  Vt  No  later  than  last  year,  Mr. 
John  Bright  declared  to  his  constituents  that  were  Ire¬ 
land  removed  one  thousand  miles  westward  into  the  ocean, 
the  Irish  proprietors  would,  almost  one  and  all,  be  hurled 
into  the  ocean  in  a  day,  or  something  to  that  effect ;  and 
for  the  fearless  enunciation  of  his  honest  conviction,  and 
a  patent  truth,  the  able  statesman  has  been  since  sub  • 
jected  to  every  species  of  petty  annoyance  by  the  con¬ 
temptible  Irish  geocrats.  Yet,  I  not  alone  subscribe  to 
his  opinion,  but  I  furthermore  add  my  own,  that  in  the 
very  latitude  in  which  we  are,  at  the  very  door  of  Eng¬ 
land,  with  all  her  thirty  thousand  redcoats  to  protect  the 
devastators  in  their  work  of  ruin,  between  a  “  Sicilian 
Vespers”  of  landlords  and  security  to  the  tenant  there 
is,  at  no  distant  day,  no  alternative. 

‘ ‘  Sunt  denique  fines. ” 

“Is  it  surprising,”  says  the  late  Mr.  Hume,  M.P., after 
describing,  in  harrowing  colors,  the  condition  of  “  the 
forlorn  outcast,”  the  victim  of  the  sic  volo  power  of  a 
Cromwellian  landlord,  “is  it  surprising  that  a  population 
in  such  a  state  should  occasionally  be  tempted  to  commit 

f  “Ireland,”  &c.,  p.  161. 


*  March,  1846. 


300 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 

• 

acts  of  violence  %  What  sympathy  can  they  feel  with  the 
possessors  of  property  %  What  to  them  are  the  advan¬ 
tages  of  law  and  order  ?  Accordingly  we  find  that  they 
are  often  stimulated  to  do  wrong  by  despair.”*  True, 
“  by  despair,”  which  Mr.  Binn  considers  only  “  natural 
but  the  possessor  of  property  constantly,  not  “  often,” 
does  wrong  through  mere  caprice,  or  bigotry,  or  passion, 
or  malice,  or  all  put  together. 

The  latest  palliation  of  these  “agrarian  outrages”  comes 
from  the  lips  of  a  cabinet  minister — the  present  Chief 
Secretary  for  Ireland.  Interpellated  by  Mr.  Heygate  last 
session,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  Bight  Hon.  Chi¬ 
chester  Fortescue,  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland,  after-  all 
manner  of  menace  and  bluster  about  “  strong  and  violent 
legislation  ....  for  this  deplorable  offence,”  and  any 
amount  of  protestations  of  his  government’s  anxiety  to 
“  protect  life  and  property  ”  (of  the  landlords),  concludes 
with  the  following  scathing  indictment  against  the  very 
persons  whose  “  life  and  property  ”  he  is  prepared  to  pro¬ 
tect,  even  by  “  exceptional  legislation,”  and  “  by  sending 
an  extra  force  to  the  district,  the  cost  of  which  has  been 
borne  by  the  locality  :”  “  I  have  still  great  hope  that, 
if  no  unjustifiable  use  be  made  of  the  rights  of  pro¬ 
perty,  such  as  that  which  produced  the  outrage  in  Tip¬ 
perary  last  autumn  (Mr.  Scully’s  escapade),  the  vigilance 
of  the  government  will  be  able  to  keep  under  this 
lamentable  class  of  offence”  (hear,  hear).  In  other  words, 
these  rack-renters  and  exterminators — these  autocrat 
landlords  of  tenants-at-will,  “unjustifiably  exercise  a 
right,”  and  for  this  injustice,  not  to  be  otherwise  averted 
or  avenged,  the  tyrant  is  slain.  Had  he  not  “  unjusti¬ 
fiably”  thus  acted  he  might  move  about  to  the  end  in  a 
whole  skin.  It  was,  therefore,  his  own  “  unjustifiable  ” 


*  House  of  Commons,  June  2,  1846. 


* 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


301 


exercise  of  a  legal  right  that  brought  on  him  his  prema¬ 
ture  fate.  Thus  what  is  “right  in  law”  is  “unjustifi¬ 
able”  in  fact  and  in  morals;  and,  therefore,  one  day 
should  not  be  lost  in  making  “  right”  and  “  law”  con¬ 
sort,  and  in  depriving  the  landlord  of  the  power  of  thus, 
by  the  very  fact  of  exercising  a  right,  doing  an  egregious 
and  irreparable  wrong. 

How  is  this  to  be  done  ?•  The  question  is  answered  in 
the  concluding  chapter. 

By  security  of  tenure,  in  some  form,  at  moderate 
rents. 

Meantime,  I  must  once  more  enter  my  protest  against 
the  assumption  that  these  “  agrarian  outrages”  are  more 
revolting  than  any  of  those  daily  shocking  murders, 
child  murders,  wife  murders,  and  the  like,  which  are 
regarded  as  a  matter  of  course  in  England,  and,  in  the 
words  of  the  Irish  Times  of  the  6th  July,  have  become, 
there,  “  national  institutions.” 

It  is,  indeed,  greatly  to  be  regretted,  to  be  deplored, 
I  must  say,  that  the  remedy  still  in  store  for  the  removal 
of  this  gangrene  is  still — repression  and  not  concession. 
At  a  late  sitting  of  the  House  of  Lords,  the  Marquis  of 
Clanrickarde  is  reported  to  have  spoken  as  follows  : — 

“  The  constant  recurrence  of  agrarian  outrages  in 
Ireland,  and  the  inability  of  the  authorities  to  detect  the 
perpetrators,  was  a  disgrace  to  the  country.  During  the 
last  fifteen  months,  commencing  with  the  murder  of  Mr. 
Fetherston-Haugh,  and  ending  with  the  attempted  mur¬ 
der  of  Mr.  Warburton,  there  had  been  fifteen  outrages  of 
this  character.  Although  eleven  persons  had  been  killed 
and  three  severely  wounded,  only  two  of  the  perpetrators 
had  been  brought  to  justice,  and  no  life  had  been  for¬ 
feited  for  so  many  taken.  In  1865  there  were  87  agrarian 
outrages  in  Ireland.  In  1867,  123,  and  in  1868,  160. 

“  The  impunity  with  which  murder  and  outrage  were 


302 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


committed  showed  that  the  executive  government  were 
powerless,  and  that  assassins  were  powerful.  He  urged 
that  there  ought  to  be  a  more  efficient  constabulary  for 
the  prevention  and  detection  of  crime,  and  that  the 
government  should  place  themselves  more  in  communica¬ 
tion  with  the  loyal  resident  gentry.” 

To  which  Lord  Hufferin  thus  replied,  on  the  part  of 
the  government : — 

“  I  will  admit,  both  as  a  private  individual  and  as  a 
member  of  her  majesty’s  government,  that  there  is  much 
to  recommend  itself  in  the  first  of  these  suggestions,  and 
I  may  go  so  far  as  to  state  that  that  resource  has  not 
escaped  the  attention  of  her  majesty’s  government ;  but 
it  is  obvious  that  it  would  be  extremely  unwise  if  I  were 
to  take  it  upon  myself,  on  an  occasion  such  as  this,  to 
enter  into  details  as  to  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  have  resorted  to  such  means  as  he  refers  to.  With 
respect  to  the  alternative  of  intimate  communications 
between  the  government  and  magistracy,  I  may  inform 
my  noble  friend  that  no  complaint  has  been  made  of  any 
want  of  attention  to  representations  made  to  the  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  or  to  the  late  Lord  Lieutenant  of 
Ireland.  It  is  proper  and  desirable  that  the  executive 
government  should  be  in  close  communication  with  the 
local  magistracy,  but  that  is  not  the  only  way  of  pro¬ 
ceeding.  As  an  Irish  resident  myself  I  naturally  feel  as 
deeply  as  any  of  your  lordships  the  slur  which  these 
outrages  cast  on  every  one  connected  with  Ireland,  and 
I  assure  your  lordships  that  not  the  Lord  Lieutenant, 
Lord  Spencer,  but  the  whole  of  her  majesty’s  govern¬ 
ment  feel  as  much  as  any  one  the  responsibility  which 
is  resting  upon  them  in  connection  with  this  subject,  and 
that  they  are  using  every  method  and  device  in  the 
administration  of  justice  to  bring  the  authors  of  these 
crimes  to  condign  punishment”  (hear,  hear). 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


303 


The  subject  then  dropped. 

Thus,  not  a  word  about  concession.  Not  the  slightest 
hint  as  to  the  restriction  of  that  “  right,”  the  “  unjusti¬ 
fiable  exercise  ”  of  which  has  terminated  in  the  transac¬ 
tions  thus  animadverted  on :  “  the  police  ”  and  “  the  local 
gentry,”  that  is,  the  landlords  themselves,  are  to  have,  as 
hitherto,  the  management  and  government  of  the  peasant 
serfs.  Elsewhere,  even,  we  are  officially  promised  the 
Neapolitan  institution  of  secret  police,  for  the  special 
protection  of  landlords  in  the  “  unjustifiable  exercise”  of 
their  rights.  It  is  even  announced,  while  I  am  actually 
penning  these  pages,  that  a  special  commission  is  to  issue 
— if  it  has  not  been  already  sped — to  try  Barrett,  the 
reputed  assailant  of  Captain  Lambert ;  the  government 
thus  displaying  its  exceptional  and  “  special”  watchful¬ 
ness  over  the  lives  of  a  class  whose  excesses — whose 
“  unjustifiable”  use  of  (legal)  rights — have  brought  all  but 
ruin  on  the  country,  and,  undoubtedly,  brought  retribu¬ 
tion  on  their  own  head.* 

Wives,  lovers,  friends,  children,  are  murdered  by  the 
score  every  week  in  England,  and  the  ordinary  tribunals 
are  deemed  competent  and  swift  enough  to  deal  with 
the  authors  of  the  guilt.  Even  in  Ireland  other  murders 
— rare,  thanks  to  God,  amongst  us — are  left  to  the  retri¬ 
bution  of  the  usual  criminal  law.  But  a  landlord  is  fired 
at— a  landlord  who  perpetrated  an  eviction  on  the  father 
of  the  alleged  assailant — and,  forthwith,  are  the  special 

*  This  commission  has  actually  sped — consisting  of  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  Whiteside  and  Mr.  Justice  Keogh.  After  a  trial  of 
three  or  four  days,  the  jury  disagreed — three  only  being  fora  con¬ 
viction  ;  and  now  the  case  is  before  the  Queen’s  Bench,  Dublin,  with 
a  view  to  have  a  fresh  trial  somewhere  else,  where  a  verdict  must 
be  obtained,  per  fas  aut  nefas.  Such  is  still  the  spirit  of  our  rulers. 
Exceptional  protection  at  any  cost  for  exterminating  tyrants ; 
bars,  bolts,  and  special  commissions  for  their  supposed  opponents. 


304 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


powers  of  the  executive  put  forth,  as  if,  innocent  or  guilty, 
to  secure  the  conviction  of  the  unfortunate  accused. 

It  is  the  old,  old,  traditional  blunder.  Barrett  may  be 
found  guilty — he  may  be  sent  to  Pentonville  “  for  life  ” — 
will  the  Connaught  exterminators  be  one  wdiit  the  safer 
for  that  ?  Nay,  will  not  their  personal  security  become 
far  more  precarious  ?  Thirty  years  ago,  the  more  “  agra¬ 
rian  outragers  ”  they  hanged  in  Tipperary,  the  more 
“  agrarian  outragers  ”  of  the  landlord  class  were  shot. 
The  “  law  ”  at  length  had  to  confess  itself  beaten.  The 
landlords  gave  up  evicting  the  tenants,  and  theft  the 
tenants  gave  up  shooting  the  landlords.  The  cause  had 
ceased,  and  with  it  the  effect. 

So  now,  let  our  landlords  cease  from  coercing,  evicting, 
brow-beating,  trampling  under  foot  in  every  way,  and,  the 
source  of  “  agrarian  crime  ”  being  thus  dried  up,  the  out¬ 
let,  instead  of  conducting  its  turbid  waters,  will  grow  into 
a  verdant  herbage,  supplying  healthy  nutriment  where  it 
wrought  death. 

The  truth,  therefore,  is  patent — that  all  the  11  agrarian 
outrages,”  as  they  are  called,  that  have  taken  place  in 
Ireland  these  fifty  years  past,  have  been  the  natural 
fruit  of  more  heinous'  agrarian  outrages  of  another  class, 
going  by  the  name  of  “the  exercise  of  agrarian  rights.”  The 
law  gave  the  landlord  the  right  to  murder  his  tenant,  and 
tenant’s  wife  and  family — all  guiltless  of  crime.  The 
tenant,  then,  sought  in  nature  the  right  to  slay  the 
murderer  of  his  hopes,  his  happiness,  and  his  family,  in 
return. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


305 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

RACK  RENTS. 


“Landlords  take  advantage  of  the  dreadful  necessity,  and  exact  rent  out  of  all 
proportion  with  the  value  of  the  land.” — Mr.  Wyse's  “  Evid.  be] ore  the  Houses  of 
Lords  and  Commons,  1824,”  pp.  8,  and  5  and  6. 


Mr.  J ohn  Stuart  Mill  defines  rent  (of  land),  the  sur¬ 
plus  above  the  ordinary  profits  of  capital  and  labor  ex¬ 
pended  on  the  land.  Hence,  he  naturally  concludes  that 
when  land,  with  the  judicious  and  industrious  appliances 
of  the  above  agencies,  fails  to  produce  such  a  surplus,  it 
should  pay  no  rent.  The  precise  words  of  the  able  and 
humane  political  economist  are  :  “  The  rent,  therefore, 
which  any  land  will  yield,  is  the  excess  of  its  produce 
beyond  what  would  be  returned  to  the  same  capital  if 
employed  on  the  worst  land  in  cultivation,”  this  latter 
being  supposed  merely,  if  at  all,  to  repay  the  cost  of 
culture.  This  “  surplus,”  or  excess  is  handed  over  to 
what  is  called  the  “  owner,”  for  his  giving  “  the  use  of  the 
land.” 

This  definition  being  accepted,  the  rents,  generally 
throughout  Ireland, merit  their  unenviable  name  of  “rack- 
rents.” 

Fully  three  hundred  years  ago,  this  rack-renting  system 
began  to  develop  itself.  “  The  landlords  there  ”  (Ireland), 
says  Spenser,  “  most  shamefully  rack  their  rents;”* so  that 

*  “  State  of  Ireland,”  works,  vol.  vi.,  p.  33. 

U 


306 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


our  present  generation  of  rack-renters,  land-jobbing  com¬ 
panies,  as  well  as  land-sliarking  individuals,  have  a  long 
prescription  for  their  legalized  system  of  plunder.  But 
it  was  only  after  the  Revolution  that  rack-renting  became 
a  confirmed  system.  It  is  thus  described  by  Swift,  as 
we  have  already  seen  :  — 

“  The  rise  of  our  rents  is  squeezed  out  of  the 

VERY  BLOOD,  AND  VITALS,  AND  CLOTHES,  AND  DWELL¬ 
INGS  OF  THE  TENANTS,  WHO  LIVE  WORSE  THAN  ENGLISH 
BEGGARS.”*  Again,  he  speaks  of  “  the  families  of  far¬ 
mers  who  pay  great  rents,  living  in  filth  and  nastiness, 
on  buttermilk  and  potatoes,  without  a  shoe  or  stocking 
to  their  feet,  or  a  house  so  convenient  as  an  English 
hog-sty  to  receive  them.”f  The  very  same  language 
might  be  employed  with  equal  truth  and  aptness  to-day. 
Reading  over  the  following,  one  would  fancy  the  writer 
had  some  such  jobbers  as  the  National  Building  and  Land 
Investment  Company  before  his  eyes  :  “  Another  great 
calamity,”  writes  he,  “  is  the  exorbitant  raising  of  the  rents 
of  land.  Upon  the  determination  of  all  leases  made 
before  1690,  a  gentleman  thinks  he  has  but  indifferently 
4  improved 7  his  estate  if  he  has  only  doubled  his  rent- 
roll.  Farms  are  screwed  up  to  a  rack  rent,  leases 
granted  but  for  a  small  term  of  years  (not  quite  so  bad 
as  now),  tenants  tied  down  to  hard  conditions  (not,  I  dare 
say,  so  far  as  to  have  to  refuse  poor  wayfarers  a  night’s 
lodging  on  pain  of  a  £10  fine),  and  discouraged  from  culti¬ 
vating  the  land  they  occupy  to  the  best  advantage,  by  the 
certainty  they  have  of  the  rent  being  raised,  on  the  ex¬ 
piration  of  their  lease,  proportionally  to  the  improvements 
they  shall  make.  Thus  it  is  that  honest  industry  is  re¬ 
strained  ;  the  farmer  is  a  slave  to  his  landlord  ;  it  is  well  if 
he  can  cover  his  family  with  a  coarse  home-spun  frieze. 

*  “Short  View.”  vol.  ix.,  p.  206.  i'Tbhl.,  p.  205. 

J  “  Answer  to  a  Memorial .” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


307 


Yet  in  Swift’s  day  the  rental  of  Ireland  amounted  only 
to  <£2,000,000,  while  to-day,  something  over  a  hundred 
years  later,  it  amounts  to  nearly  £15,000,000,  if  not 
more,  or  nearly  to  an  advance  of  800  per  cent. 

Let  us  contrast  this  with  his  estimate  of  the  English 
rental.  He  says,  “  The  industry  and  parsimony  of  the 
English,  added  to  the  easiness  of  their  rents ,  makes  them 
rich  and  sturdy.”* 

Dr.  Woodward,  Dean  of  Clogher  and  Bishop  of  Cloyne, 
attributes  the  squalid  misery  of  “the  lower  classes  of  our 
people  ”  to  the  “  exorbitant  rents,”  in  the  following 
terms : — 

“  That  their  poverty  is  like  to  continue,  with  but 
little  mitigation,  will  be  evident  to  any  intelligent  man 
who  reflects  on  the  following  amongst  other  causes  of  it : 
the  exorbitant  rent  extorted  from  the  poorer  tenants, 
ever  loth  and  afraid  to  leave  the  ancient  habitations, 
by  the  general  method  of  letting  farms  to  the  highest 
bidder,  without  any  allowance  to  a  tenant’s  right,  the 
system  of  letting  large  tracts  of  land  to  undertakers 
inured  to  tyranny  and  extortion ,”t  &c. 

For  “undertakers”  put  land-jobbers ,  and  the  truth  of 
the  remark  applies  to-day,  as  it  did  just  one  hundred 
and  one  years  ago,  when  it  first  came  from  the  author’s 
pen. 

Still  more  indignantly  does  he  furnish  us  with  the  fol¬ 
lowing  piece  of  intelligence,  revealing  the  landlords  of 
his  day  as  accomplices  in  even  agrarian  conspiracies,  for 
the  very  purpose  of  enlarging  their  own  rental,  even  to 
the  detriment  of  their  own  clergy  and  church  : — 

“  The  present  proceedings,”  writes  he,  “  are  not  a 

*  “Letter  to  Lord  Middleton,”  works,  vol.  ix.,  p,  143. 
t  “Argument  in  support  of  tlie  right  of  the  poor,”  1785,  third 
ed.,  pp.  17,  18,  &c.  , 


303 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


paroxysm  of  frenzy  originating  witli  rash  and  ignorant 
peasants,  but  a  dark  and  deep  scheme  planned  by  men 
skilled  in  law,  and  in  the  artifices  by  which  it  may 
be  evaded.  These  enemies  to  the  public  peace  and  to  the 
Protestant  clergy,  though  nominal  Protestants,  suggested 
to  the  farmers  to  enter  into  a  combination,  under  the 
sanction  of  an  oath,  not  to  carry  their  tithes,  or  assist  any 
clergyman  in  drawing  them ;  and  a  form  of  summons  to 
draw,  penned  with  legal  accuracy,  was  printed  at  Cork  at 
the  expense  of  a  gentleman  of  rank  and  fortune,  and 
many  thousand  copies  of  it  circulated  with  diligence, 
through  the  adjoining  counties  of  Kerry,  Limerick,  and 
Tipperary.”* 

By  such  means,  the  insatiable  landlords  succeeded  in 
ultimately  doing  away  with  the  tithe  of  agistment,  “  by 
an  act,”  which  Primate  Boulter  calls  “  wholesale  and  im¬ 
pudent  robbery,  which  threw  the  support  of  the  Protes¬ 
tant  clergy,  from  the  most  opulent  of  the  Protestant 
landlords,  upon  the  most  indigent  of  the  Catholic  cottiers, 
and  from  the  richest  soil  in  the  country,  on  lands  of  in¬ 
ferior  quality . only  the  fortieth  part  of  the 

whole.”  f 

I  take  the  following,  verbatim  et  literatim,  from  a  note 
in  Sadleir’s  invaluable  work.  Having  in  his  text  im¬ 
peached  the  absentees — those  “  cut-purses  of  the  empire,” 
“the  deadliest  foes  of  Ireland,”  &c.,  &c. — with  being  a 
sort  of  pioneers  for  the  rest  of  the  landlords,  and  by 
constantly  exercising  their  instruments  of  devastation, 
having  certainly  cleared  the  way  for  those  enormously 
high  rents,  which,  to  the  great  discredit  of  too  many  of 
the  proprietors,  are  extorted  from  the  suffering  peasantry 
of  Ireland,  he  subjoins  in  a  note  : — 

*  “  Present  State  of  the  Church  of  Ireland,”  p.  79. 

f  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


309 


“I  cannot  better  preface  a  few  subjoined  proofs  of  this 
assertion  than  in  the  words  of  a  dignitary  of  the  Church 
of  Ireland,  in  a  little  work  entitled  ‘  Lacrymce  Hibernicce.’ 

“  Speaking  of  the  causes  of  the  wretched  poverty  of 
Ireland,  he  thus  expresses  himself : — 

“  ‘We  know  here  we  touch  a  tender  subject.  We  have 
observed  how  the  Irish  landlords  started  up  in  anger  in 
the  House  of  Commons  when  it  was  hinted  that  their 
lands  were  let  at  too  high  a  rate,  and,  of  course,  unless 
his  insignificance  secures  him,  the  writer  expects  to  meet 
his  share  of  their  reproach.  Notwithstanding,  he  says, 
and  he  has  the  opinion  of  some  of  the  ablest  men  of  the 
nation  to  confirm  it,  that  the  lands  of  Ireland  are, 
generally  speaking,  let  at  an  exorbitant  over-value.’ 

“  And  this  evil,  too,  is  attributed  to  the  ‘  principle  ot 
population,’  which,  in  every  attitude  it  assumes,  and 
every  dogma  it  delivers,  is  still  the  avowed  enemy  of  the 
mass  of  mankind.  Let  the  following  proofs,  which  might 
be  multiplied  to  any  extent,  show  that  the  increase 
simply,  as  increasing  the  competition  for  land,  has 
little  to  do  with  the  matter.”*  Then,  after  quoting 
Spenser  and  Swift,  he  puts  forward  Archbishop  Boulter 
as  saying : — 

“  ‘  Here  the  tenant,  I  fear,  has  hardly  ever  more 
than  a  third  for  his  share,  and  too  often  only  a  fourth 
and  a  fifth.’t 

.  “  ‘  Hear  this,  ye  great  English  monopolizing  tenants, 
who  tell  your  landlords  none  but  a  large  farmer  can  pay 
them  good  rents,’  says  the  Bight  Hon.  John  Fitzgibbon, 
Attorney-General.”  | 

“  The  peasantry  are  ground  down  to  powder  by  enor¬ 
mous  rents,”  says  the  Quarterly ,  “  which  are  only  paid  by 

*  “  Grievances  of  Ireland,”  p.  8  ;  Sadleir,  p.  48,  note. 

f  “Letters,”  vol.  i,  p.  292.  £  Speech,  1787. 


310 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  exportation  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  food  raised  in 
the  country,  leaving  to  those  who  grow  it  a  bare  subsist¬ 
ence  upon  potatoes  eked  out  with  weeds.”  * 

Let  the  following  expressions  convey  the  estimates  of 
the  several  writers  on  this  important  subject : — 

“  Exorbitant  rents.” — (Gordon’s  “  Hist,  of  Ireland,” 
vol.  ii.,  p.  241.) 

“  Exorbitant  rents.” — (Newenham’s  “  Inquiry,”  &c. 

p.  15.) 

“  Exorbitant  rents.” — (“  Argument  for  the  Support  of 
the  Poor,”  Dr.  Woodward,  p.  15.) 

“ Exorbitant  rents.” — (Curwen,  “  Observations  on  the 
State  of  Ireland,”  vol.  ii.,  32.) 

“Exorbitant  rents.” — (“  First  Report  on  the  State  of  Ire¬ 
land,  1825,”  p.  38  ;  seepp.  59,307,413,414, 638, &c.,  &c.) 

“  It  is  an  undoubted  fact  that,  as  landlords,  they 
exact  more  from  their  tenants  than  the  same  class  of  men 
in  any  other  country.” — (Wakefield’s  “  Account  of  Ire¬ 
land,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  795.) 

Bishop  Berkley  gives  his  estimate  of  the  fairness  of 
Irish  rents  by  calling  Irish  landlords  men  of  “ vulturine 
beaks  with  bowels  of  iron  ;”f  much  the  same  as  the  descrip¬ 
tion  given  of  them  by  the  Times  twenty  years  ago,  as 
exercising  their  “  rights”  “  with  hands  of  iron  and  fronts 
of  brass.” | 

But  one  living  authority,  and  he,  perhaps,  one  of  the 
best  witnesses  who  could  be  produced,  may  tell  better  than 
any  number  of  dead  ones.  In  the  debate  on  the  Irish 
Begistration  Bill,  February,  1841,  Lord  Stanley  (the 
present  Lord  Derby§) — himself  not  a  bad  landlord, 
were  he  not  an  absentee — declared,  as  had  been  so  often 

*  December,  1S40. 

t  “A  Word  to  the  Wise,”  works,  vol.  iii.,  p.  12.  |  Supra. 

§  Si’ice  deceased. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


311 


declared  before,  that  “  persons  having  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  acres  of  land  are  generally  from  April  to  Septem¬ 
ber  in  a  state  of  the  greatest  destitution,  living  upon 
potatoes,  without  either  milk  or  meat,  and  considering 
themselves  very  happy  if  they  have  dry  potatoes  enough 
— men  who  during  a  great  part  of  the  year  lived  on  dry 
potatoes — men  whom  the  landlords ,  letting  their  lands  at  a 
rack  rent,  may  upon  any  day  turn  loose  upon  the  world 
to  starve  in  tile  last  degree  of  misery.”  Indeed  the 
Quarterly  Revieiv,  the  very  organ  of  his  lordship’s  politi¬ 
cal  views,  went  so  far,  a  month  later,  as  to  accuse  the 
Irish  landlords  with  “  encouraging  the  growth  of  a  hos¬ 
tile  religion  in  order  to  swell  their  votes  and  their  rents.”* 
In  Ireland  land  is  the  only  resource — is  an  absolute  neces¬ 
sity  ;  and  therefore  the  tenant  is  not  in  a  position  to  make 
a  free  and  a  fair  bargain.  “  We  have  stated,”  says  the  last 
authority,  “  and  indeed  the  fact  is  notorious,  that  the 
poor  Irish  cottier  will  give  for  land  not  only  the  utmost 
penny  of  its  value ,  but  even  beyond  it.  The  rate,  therefore,  is 
no  proof  nor  measure  of  his  rent.  He  may  hold  land  rated 
at  £5  on  terms  which  make  his  bargain  worse  than 
nothing.”  Hence  Sir  Francis  Head  aptly  calls  Irish 
rents  “  competition  rents.”  +  Of  this  there  are  several 
living  illustrations  at  this  moment  in  this  parish.  The 
townlands  of  Kilkerrin,  Newtown,  Cloonee,  and  Derrew, 
have  been  lately  raised  to  a  figure  of  over  60,  70,  and 
114  per  cent,  over  the  tenement  valuation,  though  that, 
in  their  case,  was  deemed  rather  high  itself !  !  !  J 

In  truth,  land  in  Ireland  is  let  at  famine  prices.  There 
is  no  check  on  the  grasping  landlord  but  his  own  avarice. 
The  same  spirit  of  rapacity,  reprobated  by  Swift  as  all- 
devouring  in  his  own  day,  is  at  work  in  Ireland  at  this 
moment.  The  landlord  cannot  bear  to  see  his  tenant 

*  Quarterly  Review,  March,  1S41. 

f  “  A  Fortnight  in  Ireland,”  p.  182-3.  X  See  Appendix. 


312 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  in  a  whole  coat,”  without  at  once  “  enhancing  the 
rent.”  A  few  years  ago,  a  proprietor,  now  no  more,  in  a 
parish  adjoining  this,  noticed  a  neat  dress  cap  on  the 
head  of  a  tenant’s  daughter,  one  day,  in  the  streets  of  the 
little  town.  He  sent  for  the  tenant — told  him  he  would 
raise  his  rent — that  he  saw  his  daughter  the  other  day 
wear  a  better  cap  than  Lady  K — x,  liis  own  (the  land¬ 
lord’s)  wife.  The  man  knew  he  could  not  pay  the  ad¬ 
vance,  therefore  refused,  and — was  evicted  ! ! 

At  this  moment  a  very  industrious  and  respectable 
farmer  in  the  parish  of  the  Neale,  county  Mayo,  is  under 
“  notice  to  quit,”  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Ben.  Jennings,  of 
Mount  Jennings,  for  not  consenting  to  the  alternative  of 
either  giving  up  to  the  “  master”  part  of  his  farm  of  one 
hundred  acres  (for  which  he  pays  £166  8s.  a  year),  or 
else  submitting  to  an  arbitrary  advance  in  the  rent.  At 
this  moment  several  landlords  are,  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Tighe,*  lately  spoken  at  the  tenant-right  meeting 
at  Castlebar,  “  running  a  race  with  legislation” — enhanc¬ 
ing  the  rents  before  the  passing  of  such  an  agrarian  law 
as  may  arrive.  I  only  hope  the  wretched  tenants  may 
resist  the  grasping  exactions. 

I  might  multiply  authorities  on  this  point  to  an  in¬ 
definite  extent.  Indeed  the  fact  that  the  actual  rental 
of  all  Ireland  is,  on  an  average,  some  40  per  cent,  over 
its  valuation,  that  valuation,  be  it  borne  in  mind,  being 
effected  with  a  special  view  to  taxation,  would,  of  itself, 
be  proof  conclusive,  apart  from  all  authority,  that  the 
rental  of  the  country  is  what  Spenser,  three  hundred  years 
ago,  and  Lord  Stanley,  just  thirty  years  ago,  designated 
a  “  rack  rent.” 

“  The  anxiety  of  the  peasantry  to  keep'land,”  says  Mr. 
Barrington, f  “  is  such,  that  they  promise-  any  rent,  how- 

*  Himself  one  of  the  best  landlords  in  Mayo. 

t  House  of  Commons,  1832,  Nos.  11  to  49. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


313 


ever  unable  to  pay  it.  I  attribute  the  disturbances,  in  some 
degree,  to  the  over-letting  the  land  for  more  than  its  value, 
and  then  dismissing  the  tenant  when  he  is  unable  to  pay 
the  rent  promised ;  knowing  that  when  he  is  turned  out 
he  must  probably  starve.” 

“There  is  in  Ireland,”  says  Mr.  Barry,  “  such  a  com¬ 
petition  for  land,  that  it  generally  rests  with  the  landlord 
to  name  his  own  rent.”* * * § 

“  This  competition,”  says  Mr.  Wyse,  “  is  universal  and 
unabated.  Landlords  take  advantage  of  the  dreadful 
necessity,  and  exact  rent  out  of  cdl  proportion  with  the 
value  of  the  land.  The  consequences  are  obvious — if  the 
tenant  pays  he  must  starve,”! — if  he  does  not  pay  he  is 
turned  out — “  converted,”  says  Mr.  Smith  O’Brien  (as  we 
have  seen  above),  “  into  a  forlorn  outcast,  without  employ¬ 
ment  or  provision.”!  “The  desolate  wretch,”  says  Sadleir, 
“  is,  in  such  circumstances,  driven  to  desperation  (the 
words  of  Mr.  Hume  in  1846),  and,  forming  a  connection 
with  a  multitude  of  others  who  have  been  similarly 
treated,  he  proceeds  to  those  acts  of  violence  which  are 
so  frequent  in  Ireland.”  § 

“  Land,”  says  Mr.  Francis  (late  Judge)  Blackburne, 
“  is  to  the  Irish  peasant  a  necessary  of  life.  The  conse¬ 
quence  to  him  of  not  getting  it  is  starvation .” 

Sir  James  Cotter,  in  a  debate  in  the  Irish  House  of 
Commons,  admitted  that  the  landlords  of  the  south  had 
“  been  base  enough  to  connive  at  the  excesses  of  the 
Right  Boys,  in  the  hopes  of  raising  their  rents  by  adding 
the  share  of  the  clergy  to  what  they,  the  landlords, 
already  extorted  from  the  miserable  population.”||  But 

*  Evid.  House  of  Commons,  1830,  195,  367. 

•f  House  of  Lords,  1824,  p.  8  ;  House  of  Commons,  1824,  pp.  5-6. 

X  Speech  in  House  of  Commons,  June  2,  1840. 

§  “Ireland,  its  Evils,”  &c.,  p.  141  ;  ed.  1827. 

||  “Irish  Debates,”  vol.  vi:.,  p.  61. 


314 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


the  estimate  of  Lord  Clare  is  more  explicit,  and  more 
emphatic  still.  “  I  am,”  said  he,  “  well  acquainted  with 
the  province  of  Munster;  I  know  that  it  is  impossible  for 
human  wretchedness  to  exceed  that  of  the  miserable 
peasantry  of  that  province.  I  know  that  the  unhappy 
tenantry  are  ground  to  powder  by  the  relentless  land¬ 
lords,  who  grasp  at  the  whole  produce  of  the  soil,  and, 
not  satisfied  with  present  extortion,  have  been  so  base  as 
to  instigate  the  insurgents  to  rob  the  clergy  of  their 
tithes,  not  in  order  to  alleviate  the  distresses  of  their 
tenantry,  but  that  they  may  add  the  share  of  the  clergy 
to  the  cruel  RACK-RENTS  already  paid.”*  Thus  spoke  no 
enemy  of  the  territorial  class;  and  should  there  be  a 
doubt  cast  on  his  evidence,  that  previously  adduced  from 
Dr.  Woodward  is  quite  sufficient  to  place  its  accuracy 
beyond  the  reach  of  reasonable  question. 

“  The  Irish  landlords,  as  a  class,  are  needy,  exacting,  unre¬ 
mitting,  harsh,  and  without  sympathy  for  their  tenantry.”! 

“  Landlords  in  Ireland,  among  the  lesser  orders,  extort 
exorbitant  rents  out  of  the  bowels,  sweat,  and  rags  of  the 
poor,  and  then  turn  them  adrift ;  they  are  corrupt 
magistrates,  and  jobbing  grand  jurors,  oppressing  and 
plundering  the  miserable  people.”! 

“  The  Irish  country  gentleman,”  says  the  Dublin  Pilot 
of  2nd  Jan.,  1833,  “is,  we  are  sorry  to  say,  the  most 
incorrigible  being  that  infests  the  face  of  the  globe. 
In  the  name  of  law  he  tramples  on  justice;  boasting 
superiority  of  Christian  creed,  he  violates  Christian 
charity ;  is  mischievous  in  the  name  of  the  Lord.  Were 
the  Irish  government  inclined  to  govern  the  country 
with  good  policy — which,:  bless  its  heart !  it  is  not — 
the  greatest  impediment  it  would  find  would  be  in  the 


*  Speech,  Irish  House  of  Commons,  31st  Jan.  1787. 
t  Bicheno.  !  Bryan’s  “  View  of  Ireland,”  1S32. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


315 


arrogant,  besotted,  grasping,  rack-renting,  spendthrift, 
poor,  proud,  and  profligate  country  gentleman.” 

But  authorities  to  prove  that  the  land  of  Ireland  is 
generally  let  at  a  rack-rent  might  be  multiplied  to  any 
extent.  In  fact,  its  excess,  at  an  average  of  40  per  cent, 
all  over  Ireland,  and,  in  some  cases,  as  in  the  townland 
of  Derrew,  in  this  parish,  at  114  per  cent.,  and  in  others 
upwards  of  70  per  cent.,  over  the  official  tenement 
valuation,  ought  to  set  discussion  on  the  subject  at 
rest.  Surely  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  the  official 
valuators  and  the  quinquennial  revisors  did  deliberate 
injustice — in  fact,  robbed  the  revenue  for  the  sake  of  the 
landlords ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  left  the  latter  exposed 
to  the  inevitable  imputation  of  letting  their  lands  at  an 
excessive  rate.  But  the  desperate  effort  made  by  most 
Irish  tenants  to  pay  these  “  competition  rents”  fully 
sustains  the  estimate  of  the  government  valuators,  and 
furnishes  an  additional  argument  in  favor  of  standard  and 
valuation,  instead  of  arbitrary  and  competition,  rents — so 
long  and  so  aptly  designated  “  Back-rents.” 


316 


TIIE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTEB  XIX. 


ABSENTEEISM. 


“The  deadliest  foes  of  Ireland.  ....  The  cut-purse  of  the  empire.” — Sadleir , 


“  Absentee,”  says  Johnson,  “  is  a  word  used  commonly 
with  regard  to  Irishmen  living  out  of  their  country.” 
The  term  is  coeval  with  the  first  English  invasion,  and 
the  evil  out  of  which  it,  sprung  is  thus  accounted  for  by 
Sir  John  Davies  :  “  These  great  lords,  having  greater 
inheritances  in  their  own  right,  in  England,  than  they 
had  in  Ireland  in  right  of  their  wives  (and  yet  each  of 
the  co-partners  had  an  entire  county  allotted  for  her  pur- 
party,  as  is  before  declared),  could  not  be  drawn  to  make 
their  personal  residence  in  this  kingdom,  but  managed 

their  estates  here  by  their  seneschals  and  servants . 

And  again,  the  decay  and  loss  of  Ulster  and  Connaught 
is  attributed  to  this — that  the  Lord  William  Burke,  the 
last  earl  of  that  name,  died  without  issue  male  ;  whose 
ancestors,  namely,  the  Eed  Earl,  and  Sir  Hugh  de  Lacy 
before  him,  being  personally  resident,  held  up  their  great¬ 
ness  there,  and  kept  the  English  in  peace  and  the  Irish  in 
awe ;  but  when  those  provinces  descended  upon  an  heir 
female  and  an  infant,  the  Irish  overran  Ulster,  and  the 
younger  branches  of  the  Burkes  usurped  Connaught. 
And  therefore  the  ordinance  made  in  England,  the 
third  of  Bichard  II.,  against  such  as  were  absent  from 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  317 

their  lands  in  Ireland,  and  gave  two-third  parts  of  the 
profits  thereof  unto  the  king  until  they  returned,  or 
placed  a  sufficient  number  of  men  to  defend  the  same, 
was  grounded  upon  good  reason  of  state,  which  ordinance 
was  put  in  execution  for  many  years  after,  as  appeareth 
by  sundry  seizures  made  thereupon  in  the  time  of  King 
Richard  II.,  Henry  IV.,  Henry  V.,  and  Henry  VI., 
whereof  there  remain  records  in  the  remembrancer’s 
office  here.  Among  the  rest,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  him¬ 
self  was  not  spared ;  but  was  impleaded  upon  this  ordi¬ 
nance  for  two  parts  of  the  profits  of  Dorbury’s  Island, 
and  other  lands  in  the  county  of  Wexford,  in  the  time  of 
Henry  VI.  And  afterwards,  upon  the  same  reason  of 
state,  all  the  lands  of  the  house  of  Norfolk,  of  the  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury,  the  Lord  Berkely,  and  others,  who,  having 
lands  in  Ireland,  kept  their  continual  residence  in  England, 
were  entirely  resumed  by  the  Act  of  Absentees,  made  in 
the  twenty-eighth  year  of  Henry  VIII.” 

Thus  did  these  English  monarchs  of  olden  times  show 
much  more  wisdom  than  our  enlightened  modern  parlia¬ 
ments.  The  prohibitions  of  Henry  VI.  extended  to  benefices 
on  pain  that  “the  issues  and  profits  of  said  benefices  (divine 
service  and  ordinary  charges  kept)  shall  be  divided,  the 
half  to  the  commodity  of  their  (the  clerical  absentees) 
benefices  and  churches,  the  other  half  to  be  expended  in 
our  sovereign  lord  the  king’s  wars  in  defence  of  this 
poor  land  of  Ireland,  and  any  grants  of  absency  made  to 
them  or  any  of  them,  or  to  be  made  and  granted  in  time 
coming,  to  the  contrary  hereof,  be  void  and  of  no  force  in 
law,  unless  that  it  be  by  authority  of  parliament.” 

The  10th  Charles  I.  imposed  a  tax  on  absentees — 
“  inhabitants  dwelling  in  England  and  elsewhere  out  of 
Ireland.”  In  1715,  the  absentee  tax  was  4s.  out  of 
the  20s.,  “  unless  such  person  should  reside  within  the 
kingdom  for  six  months  in  every  year.”  By  this  ordi- 


318 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


nance  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  Chief  Secretary,  and  such  as 
were  warranted  by  the  royal  sign  manual,  were  exempt. 

44  Absenteeism  existed/’  says  Mr.  Bryan, 44  to  a  grievous 
extent  under  the  resident  legislature  of  Ireland,  notwith¬ 
standing  all  their  exertions  to  destroy  this  plaie  politique 
la  plus  devorante.  There  were  legal  enactments  against 
absenteeism  from  1377  up  to  1753.  (In  the  reign  of 
Bichard  II.  there  was  a  heavy  tax  imposed  on  proprietors 
who  did  not  reside  in  Ireland.)  In  1773,  Mr.  Flood  made 
an  attempt  to  revive  the  old  laws,  but  failed.  In  1783,  a 
proposition  to  the  same  effect  was  supported  by  Mr. 
Grattan  in  vain.  In  1797,  Mr.  Vandeleur  made  amotion 
with  the  same  view,  which  proved  abortive.”* 

44  Abortive,”  as  half  measures  have  ever  proved,  and 
shall  prove  for  ever.  And  so  likewise  will  the  approach¬ 
ing  land  measure  prove,  unless  it  strikes  at  every  root  ol 
the  agrarian  evil,  absenteeism  included. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  origin  of  the  plague  of  absen¬ 
teeism,  44  the  ancient  plague  of  Ireland,”  44  the  prime 
curse  of  the  country,”  44  the  cut-purse  of  the  empire,”  as 
Sadleir  calls  it,+  is  to  be  sought  in  the  numberless  con¬ 
fiscations  to  which  the  soil  of  Ireland  has  been  subjected 
by  the  rulers  of  England.  The  natives  were  deprived, 
on  any  pretence  or  no  pretence,  of  their  hereditary  lands, 
and  these  were  handed  over  to  Englishmen,  who  lived  at 
home,  but  drained  their  new  acquisitions  of  the  best  por¬ 
tion  of  their  produce. 

44  A  great  part  of  the  estates,  both  real  and  personal, 
in  Ireland,”  writes  Sir  William  Petty,  44  are  owned  by 
absentees  and  such  as  draw  over  the  profits  raised  out  of 
Ireland,  refunding  nothing,  so  as  Ireland,  exporting  more 
than  it  imports,  doth  yet  grow  poorer  to  a  paradox.” J 

*  “Practical  View  of  Ireland,”  p.  41. 

7“  Ireland,”  &c.,  pp.  3S-39,  &c. 

7  “Political  Anatomy,”  p.  33. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


319 


In  1729,  Dobbs,  under  the  name  of  Prior,  published  a 
“  List  of  Absentees,”  who,  according  to  him,  drained  the 
country  of  £027,799  annually — equal  to  over  five  times 
the  amount  to-day.  The  rental  of  Ireland  was  then 
reckoned  at  about  £2,000,000. 

“  It  is  thought,”  said  Gee,  “  near  one-third  part  of  the 
rents  of  the  whole  (of  Ireland)  belong  to  English  noble¬ 
men  and  gentlemen  that  dwell  here.”* 

I  take  the  following  extracts  from  the  “  List  of  Absen¬ 
tees,”  out  of  Sadleir’s  work  : — 

“  By  means  of  our  nobles  and  gentry  deserting  their 
own  country,  and  spending  all  abroad,  our  people  are 
left  without  employment,  and  are  forced  to  shift  to 
other  countries,  even  to  America,  to  get  livelihood.  .  .  . 
’Tis  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  we  should  grow  poorer 
every  day,  under  such  an  unprofitable  issue  of  money, 
which  all  the  labor  of  the  people  and  produce  of  the 
country,  with  every  acquisition  they  can  make,  are  not 
sufficient  to  supply.  .  .  .  This  is  an  evil  long  com¬ 
plained  of.  .  .  .  There  is  no  country  in  Europe  which 
produces  and  exports  so  great  a  quantity  of  beef,  butter, 
tallow,  hides,  and  wool  as  Ireland  does,  and  yet  our  com¬ 
mon  people  are  very  poorly  clothed,  go  bare-legged  half 
the  year,  and  very  rarely  taste  of  that  flesh  meat  with 
which  we  so  much  abound.  We  pinch  ourselves  of  every 
article  of  life,  and  export  more  than  we  can  well  spare, 
with  no  other  effect  or  advantage  than  to  enable  our 
gentlemen  and  ladies  to  live  more  luxuriantly  abroad.  .  .  . 
And  they  are  not  content  to  treat  us  thus,  but  add  in¬ 
sult  to  ill-usage  ;  they  reproach  us  with  our  poverty  at  the 
same  time  that  they  take  away  our  money.  ”f 

*  “Trade  and  Navigation  of  Great  Britain,”  p.  19. 
f  “  Ireland,  ”  &c.  pp.  43-4. 


320 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Dean  Swift  never  tired  lashing  the  terrible  evil  that  re¬ 
quired  “those  great  remittances  which  perpetually  drained 
the  country  ” — that  “  drove  half  the  farmers  into  beg¬ 
gary  and  banishment.” 

“  I  should  be  glad  to  know,”  says  he,  “  by  what  secret 
method  it  is  that  we  grow  a  rich  and  flourishing  people, 
without  liberty,  trade,  manufactures,  inhabitants,  money, 
or  the  privilege  of  coining ;  without  industry,  labor,  or 
improvement  of  land,  and  with  more  than  hatf  the  rent  and 
profits  of  the  whole  kingdom  annually  exported,  for 

which  we  receive  not  a  single  farthing . If  we  do 

flourish,  it  must  be  against  everv  law  of  nature  and 
reason,  like  the  thorn  of  Glastonbury,  that  blossoms  in 
the  midst  of  winter  from  which  we  may  legitimately 
infer  that  in  his  day,  as  in  our  own,  the  “  prosperity  ” 
paeon  was  chanted  by  the  minions  of  power,  merely  to 
drown  the  bitter  cry  of  universal  distress. 

“  One  third  part,”  writes  he,  “  of  the  rents  of  Ire¬ 
land  are  spent  in  England ;  which,  with  the  profit  of 
employments,  pensions,  appeals,  journeys  of  pleasure  or 
health,  education  at  the  inns  of  courts,  or  both  universi¬ 
ties,  remittances  at  pleasure,  the  pay  of  all  the  superior 
officers  in  the  army,  and  other  incidents,  will  amount  to 
a  full  half  of  the  income  of  the  whole  kingdom,  all  clear 
profit  to  England.”!  Again  he  writes  :  “  But  besides 
the  depopulating  of  the  kingdom,  &c.  .  .  .  the  absence 
of  so  many  noble  and  wealthy  persons  has  been  the  cause 
of  another  fatal  consequence,  which  few,  perhaps,  have 
been  aware  of.  For  if  that  very  considerable  number  of 
lords  who  possess  the  amplest  fortunes  here  had  been 
content  to  live  at  home,  and  attend  the  affairs  of  their 
own  country  in  parliament  ....  we  might  have  then 
decided  our  own  properties  among  ourselves,  without 

*  “A  Short  View.” 

+  “  A  Short  View,”  works,  vol.  ix.,  p.  203. 


SINCE  THE  HEY  GLUTTON. 


321 


being  obliged  to  travel  five  hundred  miles  by  sea  and 
land,  to  our  infinite  expense,  vexation,  and  trouble ; 
which  is  a  mark  of  servitude  without  example  from  the 

practice  of  any  age  or  nation  in  the  world . As  to 

the  great  number  of  rich  absentees  under  the  degree  of 
peers,  what  particular  ill  effects  their  absence  may  have 
upon  the  kingdom,  beside  these  already  mentioned,  may 
be,  perhaps,  too  delicate  to  touch.  But  whether  those 
who  live  in  another  kingdom  upon  great  estates  here ,  and 
have  lost  all  regard  for  their  own  country,  farther  than 
upon  account  of  the  revenues  they  receive  from  it ;  I  say 
whether  such  persons  may  not  be  prevailed  on  to  re¬ 
commend  others  to  vacant  seats,  who  have  no  interest 
here  except  precarious  employment,  and,  consequently, 
can  have  no  view  but  to  preserve  what  they  have  got,  or 
to  be  higher  advanced ;  this,  I  am  sure,  is  a  very  melan¬ 
choly  question,  if  it  be  a  question  at  all."* 

“  As  to  the  lands  of  those  who  are  perpetual  absentees, 
I  do  not  see  any  probability  of  their  being  ever  improved. 
In  former  times  their  tenants  sat  at  easy  rents  ;  but  for 
some  years  past,  they  have  been,  generally  speaking, 
more  terribly  racked  by  the  dexterity  of  merciless  agents  from 
England ,  than  even  those  who  held  under  the  severest 
landlords  here.  I  was  assured,  upon  the  place,  by  great 
numbers  of  credible  people,  that  a  prodigious  estate  in 
the  county  of  Cork  being  let  upon  leases  for  lives  and 
great  fines  paid,  the  rent  was  so  high  that  the  tenants 
begged  leave  to  surrender  their  leases,  and  were  content 
to  lose  their  fines.”f 

Among  fourteen  “  true  causes  of  any  country’s  flourish¬ 
ing,  growing  rich,”  furnished  by  him  in  the  opening 
part  of  his  “  View,”  “  the  eleventh  is,  when  the  rents  of 

land  and  profits  of  employment  are  spent  in  the  country 

/  / 

*  Swift,  ib.,  Drapier’s  seventh  letter,  pp.  175-6.  t  Ibid. 

X 


322 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


which  produced  them,  and  not  in  another ;  the  former  of 
which  will  certainly  happen  when  the  love  of  our  native 
country  prevails.”  With  stinging  irony,  he  elsewhere 
advises  “  that  all  our  owners  of  these  lands  should  live 
constantly  in  England,  in  order  to  learn  politeness,  and 
qualify  themselves  for  employments  so  that,  over  a 
century  and  a  quarter  ago,  this  mischievous  depletion  was 
carried  on  in  all  its  destructiveness ;  nor  has  it  ceased 
since,  except  during  an  interval  of  eighteen  years — that 
period  within  which  Mr.  Forster  declared  that  “  Ireland 
had  risen  in  civilization,  in  wealth,  in  manufactures,  in  a 
greater  proportion  than  any  other  country  in  Europe.”t 

Almost  every  writer  on  Ireland  has  expressed  his 
reprobation  of  the  evil.  Croker,  Curwen,  Sadleir,  Eeid, 
Young,  Kay,  Thornton,  &c.,  have  written  in  its  con¬ 
demnation.  Eeferring  to  the  countless  ruined  mansions 
scattered  throughout  the  country,  Croker  writes  :  “  They 
who  reared  those  piles,  and  filled  these  rooms  with 
mirth,  who  gave  plenty  and  employment  to  the  poor, 
are  now  in  their  tombs,  and  their  living  successors,  dead 
to  patriotism,  dwell  in  other  lands,  and  leave  the  home 
of  their  ancestors  a  wilderness.  Every  one  must  wish 
such  absentees  could  be  made  to  reside  in  their  country 
— to  enrich  it  with  their  fortunes,  ornament  it  with  their 
taste,  improve  the  morals  of  the  people  by  their  example, 
refine  them  by  their  politeness,  and  protect  them  by  their 
authority;  then  might  we  hope  to  see  the  laws  respected, 
the  rich  beloved,  and  Ireland  tranquil  and  happy.”:}: 

Curwen  deplores  “  the  ruin  it  inflicts,”  while  “  the 
waters  of  oblivion  could  never  wash  out  the  stains  which 
the  scenes  of  woe  (in  an  absentee  estate)  witnessed  that 
day  had  impressed  on  his  mind.”§ 

*  “Answer  to  a  Craftsman,”  ib.,  p.  337* 

I  Speech,  17  Feb.,  1800. 

f  “  Researches  in  the  South  of  Ireland,”  p.  2G7. 

§  “  Observations  on  the  State  of  Ireland,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  255. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


323 


“Thus  it  is,”  says  Sadleir,  “wherever  absenteeism 
generally  prevails,  there  wealth  shuns  the  labor  by  which 
it  is  fed,  and  the  industry  by  which  it  is  distinguished ; 
rigorously  exacting  all  its  dues,  fancied  or  real,  and 
returning  none  to  those  to  whom  they  are  as  truly ,  though 
not  as  legally,  owing ;  carrying  off  the  products  of  the 
vintage  of  nature,  even  to  the  very  gleanings ,  to  a  far 
country,  and  leaving  the  refuse  to  those  who  cultivate 
the  soil  and  express  the  juice ;  muzzling  the  mouth  of 
the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn,  which  is  fed  with  the 
husks,  and  goaded  to  desperation.”* 

A  truer  description  of  the  condition  of  Ireland,  under 
the  curses  of  rack-rents  and  absenteeism,  could  not  be 
furnished ;  and  that  description  is  as  true  this  day,  and 
truer  still  than  it  was  thirty  years,  a  hundred,  two, 
three,  five  hundred  years  ago. 

“  But,”  pursues  this  humane  Englishman,  “  this  aban¬ 
donment  simply  is  not  all  with  which  absenteeism  stands 
charged.  It  substitutes,  for  neglected  duties,  positive 
wrongs  of  the  deadliest  character.  Absent  in  body,  it  is, 
indeed,  ever  present  in  the  spirit  of  cruelty  and  oppres¬ 
sion.  Its  very  existence  implies  a  train  of  evils,  which 
have  been,  for  centuries  past,  the  most  cruel  scourges  of 
the  country — I  mean  the  underletting  system.  Amongst 
these  middlemen,  as  they  are  called,  there  may  be,  and 
no  doubt  are,  men  of  high  honor  and  humanity;  but 
such  exceptions  render  the  cruelty  and  extortion  of  the 
entire  class  the  more  conspicuous.”! 

For  “  middlemen”  let  us  substitute  “  land-jobbers” 
and  “  agents,”  and  the  picture  is  perfect  to-day. 

These  middlemen  were  mere  land-jobbers,  who  cared 
not  a  straw  for  the  unfortunate  tenantry,  from  whose 
“  blood  and  vitals”  they  squeezed  out  the  last  farthing. 

“  Ireland,  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies,”  p,  47.  t  Ibid 


324 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  The  high  prices  of  land,  artificially  created  by  land- 
jobbers  (middlemen  referred  to),  and  the  vast  income 
drawn  from  the  country  by  absentees,  the  deadliest 
foes  of  Ireland — these  are  causes  which,  among  many 
others,  have  reduced  countless  numbers  to  want,  and 
converted  a  considerable  part  of  our  population  to  men¬ 
dicants.”* 

The  same  authentic  authorities  attributed  not  merely 
the  squalid  poverty,  but  its  necessary  concomitant, 
“  despondency  of  mind”  and  “  infection”  of  body,  to 
absenteeism  as  their  “  predisposing  cause.”t 

Several  official  reports  also  attest  the  various  evils 
caused  by  this  eternal  drain  on  the  only  industry  of  the 
country.  “  The  parts  with  which  I  am  acquainted,” 
said  Serjeant  Lloyd,  “  the  principal  gentry  have  deserted. 
They  have  become  absentees;  and  I  am  sure  I  ought  not 
to  have  omitted  to  enumerate  that  as  a  principal  cause 
of  the  disorderly  state  of  the  disturbed  counties.”^: 

Similar  was  the  testimony  of  Mr.  (afterwards  Chief 
Justice)  Blackburne,  while  Commissioner  of  the  Insur¬ 
rection  Act  during  several  years  in  the  south  of 
Ireland : — 

“  As  to  the  state  of  Ireland,”  said  he,  “  any  view  I 
suggest  would  be  incomplete  without  stating  the  effects 
of  absenteeship.  My  opinion  is  that,  independent  of 
its  abstraction  from  the  country  of  so  much  wealth,  it 
produces  great  mischief  to  the  whole  frame  of  society  : 
in  Ireland,  I  may  say,  there  is  the  destitution,  the  want 
of  a  distinct  class.  In  ordinary  times,  the  loss  of 
influence  and  authority,  and  the  control  which  belongs 
to  education,  to  rank,  and  to  property,  must  be  deeply 

*  Drs.  Baker  and  Cheyne’s  “  Account  of  the  Fever  in  Ireland,” 
vol.  ii.,  p.  98,  &c. 

f  Ibid.,  passim. 

Minutes  of  Evid.  before  Com.  of  Lords,  p.  207. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


325 


felt  in  any  country ;  but  when  it  becomes  disturbed,  I 
need  not  say  that  that  which  would  form  the  barrier  for 
the  protection  of  the  peace  is  lost  in  Ireland ;  and  I  have 
now  been  administering  the  Insurrection  Act  in  counties 
where  the  property  of  absentees  is  extensive.”* 

I  confess  I,  for  one,  would  not  lay  so  much  by  the 
moral  effect  of  the  presence  of  the  landlords — rack-renters 
as  they  are — as  by  the  “  abstraction  of  so  much  wealth  ” 
without  the  slightest  substitute.  We  have  seen  that, 
in  Swift’s  and  Dobbs’  day,  the  drain  amounted  to  nearly 
£700,000,  or  a  third  of  the  entire  rental  of  the  country  : 
it  is  computed  that  at  present  it  cannot  be  less  than 
between  £4,000,000  and  £5,000,000  ;  the  proportion  of 
drain  to  rental  being  thus  still  kept  up. 

After  Prior’s,  several  other  “  lists  of  absentees  ”  were, 
from  time  to  time,  printed.  In  reference  to  them, 
a  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review f  says  :  “  The  most  exact 
of  these  is  said  to  have  appeared  in  1782,  and,  according 
to  it,  the  annual  value  of  estates  belonging  to  absentees 
then  amounted  to  £1,227,480.  It  is  also  mid  that  a 
committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  appointed  to 
inquire  into  the  subject  in  1804,  and  that  it  was  ascer¬ 
tained  that  the  annual  amount  of  absentee  property 
exceeded  £2,000,000.”  / 

In  1830,  Mr.  Butler  Bryan  estimated,  before  a  com¬ 
mittee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  absentee  drain  at 
£3,000,000  4  Mr.  Ensor,  “  after  a  minute  calculation,” 
at  £4,000,000.  The  Irish  Times  has  lately  set  it  down 
at  £5,000,000  or  £6,000,000.§ 

The  abstraction  of  so  much  money  from  a  country  so 
poor  as  Ireland,  superadded  to  the  drain  of  £2,000,000 
or  £3,000,000,  in  the  shape  of  Irish  taxes  expended 

*  Minutes  of  Evidence  before  Committee  of  Lords, 
f  Quarterly  Review ,  April,  1836.  J  Ibid.,  p.  45. 

§  See  Appendix. 


326 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


abroad,  is  an  evil  which  none  but  a  real  stepmother 
government  would  for  a  day  suffer  to  endure.  The 
wonder  is  that,  after  generations  and  centuries  of  such 
depletion,  we  exist,  as  a  people,  at  all.  But,  as  to  our 
“  progress”  or  “'prosperity”  under  such  an  exhausting- 
system,  we  may  well  repeat,  with  Sadleir:  “As  rational 
would  it  it  be  for  a  farmer  to  dream  of  enriching  his 
fields  by  carting  off  all  their  produce,  and"  returning 
nothing  to  the  ground ;  or  a  physician  to  restore  his 
patient  from  an  atrophy  by  starvation  and  depletion, 
as  .to  suppose  Ireland  can  accumulate  capital  while  a 
long  list  of  absentees  are  not  only  depriving  her  of 
all  the  means  by  which  she  might  be  enriched,  but 
constantly  wresting  from  her  in  undue  quantities  the 
very  necessaries  of  existence.”* 

Though  a  very  few  of  the  McCulloch  and  Malthus 
school  of  political  economists  may  venture  to  defend  the 
plague  of  absenteeism,  its  innate  mischief  is  so  apparent 
as  almost  to  defy  proof.  “  The  fact  is  self-evident,”  says 
Mr.  Beid,  “  argument  would  be  considered  an  idle  waste 
of  words  and  time.”f  So  that,  in  the  words  of  Sadleir, 
so  often  quoted,  the  apologists  of  absenteeism  are  only 
“  their  own  parallel.  ”£ 

Mr.  Smith  O’Brien  thus  describes  the  absentee  class 
and  one  of  the  causes  of  the  increase  of  absenteeism  : 
'“.Next  in  the  train  of  consequences  which  followed  the 
Union  is  to  be  noticed  the  increase  of  absenteeism. 
There  are  two  classes  of  absentees.  One  class  consists 
of  great  English  proprietors,  who  have  obtained  by  con¬ 
fiscation  large  tracts  of  territory  in  Ireland.  As  an 
instance,  I  may  mention  that  the  greater  part  of  one 
county,  Londonderry,  belongs  to  the  London  companies 

*  “  Ireland,  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies.” 

f  “ Travels  in  Ireland,”  p.  342.  f  “Ireland,”  &c.,  p.  58. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


327 


This  class  is,  almost  of  necessity,  permanently  non-resi¬ 
dent.  It  is  scarcely  to  be  expected  that  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire,  Lord  Fitz  william,  Lord  Lansdowne,  should 
live  continually  in  Ireland,  whilst  they  have  continual 
inducements  to  reside  in  this  country.  The  other  class  of 
absentees  consists  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  Ireland 
who  were  in  the  habit  of  resorting  to  Dublin  previous  to 
the  Union,  but  who  are  now  naturally  attracted  to  the 
seat  of  government,  and  whose  views  and  associations  be¬ 
come  gradually  interwoven  with  English  rather  than  with 
Irish  interests.  .  .  With  respect  to  the  permanent  absen¬ 
tees,  it  is  conceived  that  a  moderate  tax,  which  would 
be  proposed  by  an  Irish  parliament,  upon  non-residence, 
would  compel  them  either  to  sell  their  estates  or  reside  in 
Ireland  a  portion  of  the  year,  or  to  yield  a  pecuniary  con¬ 
tribution  towards  those  useful  objects  which  would  be 
promoted  without  such  contribution  by  their  residence.”* 

The  following  evidence  from  the  “  Transactions  of 
the  Society  of  Friends  ”  during  the  great  famine  are  well 
worthy  of  consideration.  It  embraces  several  counties 
as  follows 

“  County  of  Cork. — This  electoral  division  being  about 
sixteen  miles  from  Macroom,  the  sufferers  are  unable  to 
make  their  way  to  the  workhouse  for  relief;  and  the  out¬ 
door  pittance  of  sixpence  a  week,  which  is  the  utmost 
given  by  the  guardians  of  the  union  to  the  sick,  is  so 
inadequate  to  the  wants  of  those  who  are  suffering  from 
disease,  that  the  committee  cannot  contemplate  their 
misery  without  feelings  of  deep  sorrow.  As  not  a  single 
resident  landlord  is  to  be  met  with  in  the  whole  of  this 
electoral  division,  the  committee  can  only  hope  to  sustain 
the  sick  from  the  charity  of  those  strangers  on  whom  God 


*  Speech  in  H.  C.,  4th  July,  1S43. 


328 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


hath  bestowed  the  means  of  relieving  their  afflicted 
brethren. 

11  County  of  Donegal . — This  parish  contains  upwards  of 
10,000  inhabitants.  Of  the  fourteen  landlords  to  whom 
the  ground  belongs  there  are  but  two  resident,  of  whom 
one  holds  a  small  property,  and  the  other  is  much  encum¬ 
bered.  The  consequence  is  much  neglect  and  wretched¬ 
ness  among  the  people,  especially  the  cottiers,  who  are 
generally  regarded  by  the  landlords  as  a  great  injury  to 
their  properties,  and  are  therefore  discountenanced  in 
every  possible  manner.  Of  these  cottier  or  pauper  fami¬ 
lies  there  may  be  about  600  or  700,  comprising  about 
3,000  individuals.  . 

“  County  of  Donegal. — Two-thirds,  exactly,  of  this  parish 
is  the  property  of  two  absentee  proprietors,  both  of  whose 
properties  are  in  Chancery  for  debt.  Extent,  4  miles 
by  3. 

11  County  of  Donegal. — The  absentee  landlord  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  parish  has  not  subscribed  one  farthing. 
Extent,  50,000 acres.  Population,  10,000. 

11  County  of  Donegal. — The  Ecclesiastical  Commissioners 
have  large  estates,  but  cannot  contribute  anything  unless 
they  are  enabled  to  do  so  by  act  of  parliament.  There 
are  other  absentee  proprietors  who  have  not  subscribed. 
Population,  14,000. 

“  County  Cavan. — This  district  is  especially  desolate, 
from  there  being  no  resident  gentry  in  the  parish.  The 
principal  estate  is  in  the  hands  of  a  trustee,  who  cannot 
give  any  relief.  The  remainder  of  the  parish  is  sub¬ 
divided  amongst  many  small  landlords,  who  are  all 
absentees,  and  none  of  them  contribute  anything;  all 
complaining  that  they  have  lost  their  rents.  One  gen¬ 
tleman,  who  has  a  few  townlands  in  this  parish,  but 
resides  on  his  property  in  another,  does  so  much  at  his 
own  house,  that  I  cannot  ask  him  to  do  much  here. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


329 


All  look  to  the  curate  alone.  The  rector  Is  taken 
up  with  his  own  division,  and  we  are  left  to  ourselves. 
I  believe  this  to  be  one  of  the  poorest  districts  in 
Cavan,  if  not  the  poorest.  Deaths  are  taking  place 
from,  actual  want,  and  if  a  change  does  not  speedily 
come,  I  fear  we  shall  be  amongst  the  most  wretched 
in  Ireland.  Extent,  54  townlands,  about  12  square 
miles.  Population,  about  6,000. 

“  Co.  Cavan. — There  is  but  one  landed  proprietor,  who 
has  been  for  three  or  four  years  residing  abroad.  I 
consider  this  parish  as  peculiarly  unfortunate  in  having 
no  resident  gentry  to  assist  at  this  crisis,  for,  with  all 
the  exertions  I  can  make,  I  find  it  impossible  to  supply 
the  demands  made  upon  me  by  such  numbers  for  daily 
support.  Extent,  4  miles  square.  Population,  2,800. 

“  Co.  Fermanagh. — The  principal  proprietor  in  this  dis¬ 
trict  is  an  absentee ;  who,  as  he  has  but  a  small  interest 
in  the  property,  takes  very  little  trouble  on  himself 
about  it.  There  are  a  good  many  petty  landlords,  who 
try  to  make  what  they  can  of  the  land,  and,  conse¬ 
quently,  have  it  set  at  the  highest  rates.  Population, 
6,511. 

“  Co.  Wicklow. — This  district  has  the  misfortune  oi 
being  on  the  estate  of  an  absentee  nobleman,  whose  em¬ 
barrassments  have  placed  the  entire  property  in  the  hands 
of  creditors,  and  is  now  being  sold  under  the  Courts  to 
satisfy  their  demands. 

“  Queen's  County. — We  have  not  one  resident  landlord 
in  the  district.  Applications  have  been  made  to  each 
non-resident,  and  up  to  the  present  time  we  have  re¬ 
ceived  but  £44.  Extent,  18,000  acres.  Population, 
over  10,000. 

“  Co.  Westmeath. — Our  proprietors  are,  almost  without 
exception,  absentees.  Extent,  5  miles  by  3.  Population, 
2,526. 


330 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


•  v 

“  Co.  Roscommon. — All  the  proprietors  but - are  ab¬ 

sentees,  and  give  no  assistance  whatever.  A  large  portion 
of  the  district  is  in  the  hands  of  receivers  under  the  Court 
of  Chancery.  Extent,  6  miles  by  1J.  Population,  3,907. 

“  Co.  Roscommon. — All  the  landed  proprietors  are  non¬ 
resident,  excepting  the  chairman  of  the  committee.  The 
rents  of  three  of  the  largest  townlands  of  the  parish 
have  been  received  for  the  last  thirty  years  by  a  receiver 
under  the  Court  of  Chancery  ;  during  which  time — there 
being  no  landlord  to  interest  himself  about  them — the 
land  has  been  divided  and  sub-divided  into  very  small 
holdings,  and  an  immense  population  has  sprung  up, 
who  are  reduced  to  the  deepest  want  by  the  failure  of 
their  usual  food.  Extent,  1,300  acres.  Population, 
5,810. 

“  Co.  Roscommon. — The  absentee  landlords  in  this  dis¬ 
trict  are  numerous.  This  town  is  peculiarly  situated,  as  it 
is  the  property  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commissioners,  who, 
by  Act  of  Parliament,  are  precluded  from  granting  any 
aid  ;  so  that,  with  a  population  of  nearly  2,000,  it  is  in  a 
state  of  unexampled  distress. 

“  Co.  Roscommon. — Our  electoral  division  is  so  destitute 
at  present,  that  there  is  no  Poor-Law  Guardian.  We 
have  never  received  any  government  grant,  and  all 
societies  refuse  us  aid — except  yours — on  account  of  our 
having  no  committee.  There  are  no  gentlemen  in  the 
neighborhood  to  form  one. 

“  Co.  Mayo. — There  are  fifteen  absentee  landlords;  their 
agents  do  not  live  in  the  parish,  and  seldom  come  near 
it ;  no  non-resident  landlord  has  sent  any  subscription. 
The  resident  landlords,  in  some  cases,  are  giving  assist¬ 
ance  to  those  around  them,  but  no  general  subscription 
has  been  entered  into.  I,  as  vicar  of  the  parish,  called  a 
meeting,  but  no  one  attended,  as  they  said  there  was 
no  one  to  represent - ,  who  is  theprincipal  landlord  and 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


331 


an  absentee.  Extent,  14  miles  by  12.  Population,  about 
16,000.” 

I  should  notice  here  a  recent  letter  of  the  Irish  Times 
Special  Commissioner,  writing  from  Mayo,  in  which  he 
enumerates  the  Marquis  of  Sligo,  Earl  of  Lucan,  Lord 
Kilmaine,  Lord  Arran,  Sir  Eoger  Palmer,  all  as  per¬ 
manent  absentees,  abstracting  over  £100,000  annually 
from  this  poor  country,  without  one  farthing  of  an  equiva¬ 
lent.  I  feel  bound,  however,'  in  justice,  to  state  that 
Lord  Kilmaine  has  never  had  recourse  to  the  inhuman 
process  of  eviction,  and  that  his  property,  in  my  present 
cure,  is  let  at  a  fair  and  moderate  rent. 

But,  reverting  to  the  report  in  question,  Mr.  Pirn 
continues  : — 

“  Co.  Mayo. — The  landed  proprietors'  of  this  district 
are  all  absentees,  with  one  exception.  They  have  not 
contributed  a  farthing  to  relieve  their  tenantry.  No 
large  farmers.  Extent,  7  miles  by  4.  Population, 
5,000. 

“  Co.  Mayo: — The  .landed  proprietors  of  this  poor 
parish  are  absentees ;  there  has  not  been  a  farthing  re¬ 
ceived  from  any  of  them.  There  are  not  more  than  four 
large  farmers — these  have  not  subscribed  to  any  relief 
fund,  though  they  have,  according  to  their  means,  given 
much  in  private  charity.  Extent,  4,194  acres.  Popula¬ 
tion,  2,500. 

“  Co.  Mayo. — Almost  the  whole  parish  belongs  to 
absentee  landlords,  who  have  given  nothing  towards  the 
relief  of  the  distress,  although  there  have  been  several 
deaths  amongst  their  own  immediate  tenantry  from  insuf¬ 
ficiency  of  food.  The  only  resident  proprietors  are  my 
brother  and  myself,  and  there  is  no  clergyman  of  any 
denomination  in  the  parish.  Population,  10,000. 

“  Co.  Galway. — The  landed  proprietors  are  all  absen¬ 
tees,  nor  have  they  contributed  a  penny  towards  relie v- 


332 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ing  their  tenants  since  the  distress  commenced.  We 
have  no  gentry,  nor  a  second  person  in  the  character  of 
a  large  farmer  within  the  parish.  Population,  4,000. 

“  Co.  Galway. — The  secretaries  of  the  Relief  Com¬ 
mittee  made  application,  by  writing,  to  twelve  landed 
proprietors,  urging  the  necessity  of  subscriptions  for  the 
relief  of  the  distressed  people,  but  received  no  reply ; 
only  two  resident ;  no  subscriptions  have  been  received 
from  either.  Large  farmers  are  a  class  unknown  here. 
Extent  of  district,  16  miles.  Population,  12,000. 

“  Co.  Galway. — This  district  has  been  one  of  the  most 
severely  visited  in  Ireland.  Last  year  the  potato  crop 
almost  universally  failed,  so  that  this  is  the  second  year 
of  scarcity.  It  is  painful  to  see  the  alteration  of  the 
people’s  appearance,  and  too  much  credit  cannot  be  given 
them  for  their  patience  under  this  visitation  of  the 
Almighty.  No  outrages  have  occurred  in  the  district, 
and  the  violations  of  property  have  been  trifling.  The 
position  of  a  country  gentleman  left  single-handed,  as  I 
am,  to  deal  with  such  a  calamity,  and  doomed  daily  to 
hear  tales  of  wroe  which  he  cannot  alleviate,  is  truly 
miserable.  I  pray,  however,  that  I  may  be  sustained 
through  it,  and  am  truly  thankful  to  the  Almighty  for 
the  many  kind  aids  he  has  provided  for  us. 

“  Co.  Galway. — The  district  within  which  I  am  prin¬ 
cipally  connected  contains  a  population  of  nearly  4,000 
souls,  of  whom  a  full  third  are  in  actual  destitution,  another 
third  are  in  deep  distress,  and  not  above  a  sixth  are  able 
to  support  themselves.  In  this  district  I  am  the  only 
resident  proprietor,  and  though  the  absentee  properties 
are  crowded  with  paupers,  afflicted  with  fever,  and  pros¬ 
trated  with  famine,  their  contributions  are  small,  and 
their  personal  assistance  nought.  There  is,  besides,  much 
property  in  the  hands  of  receivers  under  the  courts, 
where  the  usual  indulgence  cannot  be  given,  where  con- 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


333 


tribution  is  out  of  question,  and  where  the  utmost  misery 
consequently  prevails. 

“  Co.  Clare. — I  have  to  say,  in  answer  to  the  remark 
made  in  your  letter,  that,  in  the  distribution  of  a  public 
fund,  it  is  desirable  in  all  cases,  as  far  as  possible,  that  it 
be  done  through  a  regular  organization  of  the  benevolent 
and  intelligent  inhabitants  of  the  district  claiming  relief ; 
that,  alas !  in  the  district  for  which  my  daughter  is  exert¬ 
ing  herself,  there  is  not  one  person  above  the  rank  of  a 
peasant  residing ;  that  the  greater  part  is  inhabited  by 
very  poor  people  ;  arid  that  it  all  belongs  to  absentees, 
who  have  not  contributed  a  shilling  for  relief,  or  to 
persons  over  whose  properties  receivers  of  the  courts  are 
appointed. 

“  County  Longford. — This  district  labors  under  peculiar 
disadvantages,  and  is  one  of  the  poorest  localities  in 
Ireland.  The  property  belongs  entirely  to  absentee 
proprietors,  and  has  but  one  resident  gentleman  within 
the  circumference  of  eight  miles,  and  it  is  also  deprived 
of  the  residence  of  either  the  Protestant  clergyman  or 
his  curate.  For  this  reason  the  vice-lieutenant  was 
obliged  to  call  on  the  resident  magistrate,  who  lives 
twelve  miles  from  many  parts  of  the  district,  to  act  as 
chairman.  It  is  occupied  by  small  tenants  holding  from 
four  to  ten  acres,  and  very  few  upwards.  The  land  is 
bad,  and  ill  cultivated,  and  the  inhabitants  never  look 
forward  to  anything  better  than  potatoes,  and  having 
lost  them,  are  totally  destitute. 

“  Co.  Armagh. — In  this  "parish  we  have  no  resident 
landlord.  Some  absentees  hold  considerable  property  in 
it,  and  as  yet  we  have  not  received  contributions  from 
any,  except  from  two  small  proprietors.  There  is  little 
expected  from  the  others.  The  resident  farmers  have 
subscribed  handsomely,  according  to  their  means.  Popu¬ 
lation,  8,000. 


334 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  Co.  Tipperary. — There  is  not  a  resident  proprietor  in 
the  district.  The  farmers  on  the  relief  committee  have 
contributed.  Population,  4,000. 

“  Co.  Tipperary. — The  proprietor  of  the  soil  is  an 
absentee.  The  property  is  in  Chancery,  and  no  sub¬ 
scription  is  to  be  had,  although  urgently  applied  for. 
There  is  no  resident  proprietor.  Population,  about 
11,000.” 

What  other  country  in  the  universe  could  present  such 
a  picture  as  the  foregoing  displays  ?  One  class  of  men, 
vampire-like,  ever  sucking  the  life-blood  of  the  country, 
and  never  making  the  smallest  return  for  this  perpetual 
drain.  Let  us  ask  ourselves,  once  more,  to  what  excep¬ 
tional  consideration  is  this  class,  embracing  only  a  mil- 
lessimal  fraction  of  our  people,  entitled  at  the  hands  of 
the  legislature?  And  yet,  the  faintest  attempt  to  abridge 
their  traditional  excesses,  going  by  the  name  of  “  rights,” 
to  limit  their  abnormal  power,  or  to  “  teach  them,”  in 
the  quoted  words  of  Swift,  “  at  least  one  degree  of 
mercy,”  is  denounced  by  themselves  and  their  not  less 
guilty  apologists,  as  communism  and  spoliation. 

Well,  for  so  far  we  have  seen  what  our  country  has 
been  brought  to  under  the  regime  of  absenteeism,  rack- 
renting,  tenancy-at-will,  and  the  crowbar.  It  requires  no 
stretch  of  imagination  to  picture  it  under  an  opposite 
regime.  Give  the  hard-working,  and  ever  ill-fed,  ill- 
clad,  ill-housed  Irish  tenant  land  at  a  fair  rate,  security 
of  its  tenure,  immunity  from  the  arbitrary  and  capricious 
exercise  of  agrarian  power,  the  return  of  at  least  some 
portion  of  that  produce  which  his  toil  has  forced  from 
the  bowels  of  the  earth,  by  remunerative  employment  on 
that  land,  which  he  ever  tills  and  tills,  without  ever 
touching  but  the  refuse  of  its  fruit, — give  him  this,  and 
in  half  a  generation  behold  the  change  in  his  mien,  and 
the  sublime  revolution  in  the  face  of  the  country.  But 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


335 


continue  your  rack-rents,  your  evictions,  your  absentee 
draws,  and  your  agrarian  arrogance,  and  expect  nothing 
but  progressive  discontent,  periodic  disturbance,  and,  ulti¬ 
mately,  disastrous  explosion. 

We  demand  is  Irish  landlordism  worth  all  this  1 
Let  its  foregoing  history  answer. 


336 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  XX. 

POPULATION. 


“Where  the  plough  has  no  tvork  one  family  can  do  the  business  of  fifty,  and 
you  may  send  away  the  other  forty-nine.  An  admirable  piece  of  husbandry, 
never  known  or  practised  by  the  wisest  nations,  who  erroneously  thought  people 
to  be  the  riches  of  a  country.” — Swift,  “ Answer  to  a  Memorial works,  vol.  ix., 

p.  216. 


The  importance  of  a  numerous,  healthy,  happy,  and, 
therefore,  loyal  and  patriotic  population,  to  any  state  is, 
to  my  mind,  a  matter  of  simple  self-evidence  ;  yet,  strange 
infatuation  !  the  uppermost  idea  in  the  mind  of  our  poli¬ 
tical  economists  of  the  day  is,  to  “  get  rid  of”  what  they 
call  “the  surplus  population”  in  Ireland.  Sir  Eobert 
Peel,  late  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland,  has  pronounced  us 
too  many  by  a  million,  reduced,  as  we  have  been,  in 
twenty-three  years,  by  three  millions,  in  round  numbers  ; 
and  his  present  excellency — excellent,  I  freely  say,  in  a 
higher  than  a  mere  official  sense — suggests,  at  a  late 
bucolic  gathering,  that  perhaps,  according  to  the  rules 
of  political  economy,  we  are  still  too  many.  In  the  course 
of  this  chapter,  we  shall  see  how  far  the  opinion  of  the 
right  honorable  gentleman  and  the  noble  viceroy  can  be 
sustained  in  fact. 

We  know  that  in  the  palmiest  days  of  Eome,  the 
fruitful  mother  was  not  alone  highly  honored,  but  even 
specially  rewarded  by  the  state. 

“  The  importance,”  writes  Paley,  “  of  population,  and 
the  superiority  of  it  to  every  other  national  advantage, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


337 


are  points  necessary  to  be  inculcated  and  to  be  understood, 
inasmuch  as  false  estimates  and  fantastic  notions  of  ma¬ 
terial  grandeur  are  perpetually  drawing  the  attention  of 
statesmen  and  legislators  from  the  care  of  this,  the  true 
and  absolute  interest  of  a  country . We  will  con¬ 

fess,  however,  that  a  competition  can  seldom  arise 
between  the  advancement  of  population  and  any  measure 
of  sober  utility ;  because,  in  the  ordinary  progress  of 
human  affairs,  whatever  in  any  way  contributes  to  make 
a  people  happier,  tends  to  make  them  more  numerous.”* 
And  the  converse  must  be  equally  true,  that  “  whatever 
in  any  way  tends  to  make  a  people  less  numerous  also 
tends  to  diminish  their  happiness.”  And,  elsewhere,  in 
recommending  tillage  in  preference  to  pasturage,  he  says  : 
“  Tillage,  as  an  object  of  national  care  and  encourage¬ 
ment,  is  universally  preferable  to  pasturage,  because  the 
kind  of  provision  which  it  yields  goes  much  farther  in 
the  sustentation  of  human  life.  Tillage  is  also  recom¬ 
mended  by  this  additional  advantage,  that  it  affords  em¬ 
ployment  to  a  much  more  numerous  peasantry.  Indeed, 
pasturage  seems  to  be  the  art  (“  occupation  ”)  of  a  nation 
either  imperfectly  civilized,  as  are  many  of  the  tribes 
which  cultivate  it  in  the  internal  parts  of  Asia,  or  of  a 
nation,  like  Spain,  declining  from  its  summit  by  luxury 
and  inactivity.”  The  moral  is  easily  pointed. 

The  same  causes  that  contributed  so  effectually  to  the 
degeneracy  of  Spain,  are  at  this  moment  operating  most 
powerfully  against  “  the  English  interest  ”  in  Ireland ; 
and  not  hindmost  among  those  causes  is  the  undisguised 
wish  and  the  underhand  endeavors  of  English  states¬ 
men,  English  ministers,  and  English  papers,  to  diminish 
still  further  the  number  of  “  Celts”  in  Ireland,  and  drive 
the  brute  into  their  place.  Unhappily,  this  policy  is 

*  tl  Moral  Philosophy.” 

Y 


338 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


English  all  over  the  globe.  Unhappy  India  has  ex¬ 
perienced  its  fell  effects. 

Inveighing  against  the  English  devastators  of  that 
teeming  country,  Edmund  Burke  remarked,  that  “  they 
had  come  to  look  upon  a  generation  of  human  beings  as 
on  a  frog  in  an  air-pump.”  The  Carlisles,  the  Peels, 
the  Timeses ,  the  Malthusians  of  senate  and  press,  never 
take  time  to  “  enter  into  themselves,”  and  ask  :  “  Well, 
may  not  these  ‘  surplus/  whom  we  would  thus  clear  off 
without  a  pang,  be  as  profitable  members  of  the  com¬ 
munity  as  we  V  For  my  part,  I  protest  I  think  the 
world — this  wide  orb  of  ours — would  move  about  and 
revolve  in  its  annual  and  diurnal  course  as  smoothly 
and  as  regularly,  were  every  such  a  human  creature 
living  as  the  right  hon.  baronet  and  his  territorial 
proteges  of  Ireland  gathered  to  their  fathers ;  the  re¬ 
sult  would  simpty  be,  so  many  mouths  less  to  consume 
what  they  contribute  nothing  to  earn.  The  humble 
creatures  whom  these  men  would  have  banished  any¬ 
where,  to  live  or  die,  only  want  work,  and  protection  in 
doing  the  work ;  an  opportunity  of  earning  bread  at 
home,  even  for  the  consumption  of  their  deporters,  and 
they  will  not  be  heard.  Go  they  must.  “  The  barren 
fig  tree”  claims  a  right  for  ever  to  “  encumber”  the  earth, 
while  “  the  good  tree  bearing  good  fruit”  must  be  “  cut 
down  and  cast  into  the  fire.” 

In  short,  the  Malthusians  set  off  with  the  assumption 
that  our  misery  is  caused,  not  by  rack-rents ,  not  by 
absenteeism,  evictions,  consolidation,  unequal  taxation, 
provincial  inferiority,  and  hideous  misgovernment,  but 
by  our  excess  of  numbers.  A  million  less,  and  the  land 
begins  to  flow  with  milk  and  honey  !  !  . 

Well,  perhaps,  the  best  way  to  test  this  assumption 
is  to  consider  the  condition  of  the  country  when  its 
population  was  only  a  small  fraction  of  what  it  is  even  now. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


339 


The  following  is  a  pretty  reliable  list  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  of  the  country  since  1641. 


HOW  ASCERTAINED  : 


1641 

Sir  W.  Petty 

1,466,000 

1672 

Do. 

J, 100, 000 

„  corrected  Do. 

1,320,000 

1695 

Captain  South 

1,034,102 

1712 

Thomas  Dobbs 

2,099,094 

1718 

Do. 

2,169,048 

1725 

Do. 

2,317,374 

1726 

Do. 

2,309,106 

1731 

Established  Clergy 

2,010,221 

1754 

Hearth-money  collectors 

2,372,634 

1767 

Do. 

2,544,27 6 

1777 

Do. 

2,690,556 

1785 

Do. 

2,845,932 

1788 

Gervis  Parker  Bushe 

4,040,000 

1791 

Hearth-money  collectors 

4,206,612 

1792 

Bev.  Dr.  Beaufort 

4,088,226 

1805 

Thomas  Newenham 

5,395,456 

1814 

(Incomplete  of  1812) 

5,937,856 

1821 

(55  Geo.  III.  c.  120) 

6,801,827 

1831 

.  i 

t  r  •  •  •  • 

7,767,401 

1841 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

8,196,597 

1851 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

6,574,279 

1861 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

5,798,564 

The  above  figures  ai;e  well  worth  preserving  in  memory, 
as  showing  that  other  causes  besides  “surplus  popula¬ 
tion”  may  well  account  for  dearth  of  sustenance. 

Between  1641  and  1652,  when  the  population  never 
exceeded  a  million  and  a  half — in  fact,  it  decreased  by 
500,000— flour,  according  to  Mr.  Newenham,  had  risen 


340 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


in  price  “above  400  per  cent.”* * * §  But  as  this  was  tie 
exceptional  period  of  the  “  great  rebellion,”  the  dearth 
then  might  be  accounted  for  by  the  combined  causes  of 
neglected  husbandry  and  the  ravages  of  war. 

In  1672,  with  a  population,  according  to  Sir  William 
Petty,  of  only  1,110,000,  or,  corrected,  1,320,000,  “with 
a  soil  of  surpassing  fertility,  and  only  about  forty  indi¬ 
viduals  on  the  square  mile,  the  wretchedness  of  the 
masses  of  the  people  was  beyond  description.”  Their 
food  he  describes  as — “  cakes,  whereof  a  penny  serves  a 
week  for  each  ;  potatoes  from  August  till  May ;  mussels, 
cockles,  and  oysters,  near  the  sea;  eggs  and  butter 
made  very  rancid  by  keeping  in  bogs.  As  for  flesh,  they 
seldom  eat  it.  They  can  content  themselves  with  pota¬ 
toes.”! 

So  much  for  their  diet  two  hundred  years  ago,  when 
the  population  was  only  about  a  fifth  of  the  present ; 
while  as  to  their  lodgings,  they  were  only  “  wretched 
cabins,”  “  lamentable  sties,”  “  such  as  themselves  could 
make  in  three  or  four  days,”  “  not  worth  five  shillings,” 
&c.,  &c. as,  in  the  days  of  Spenser,  they  were  “sties 
rather  than  houses,  which  were  the  chiefest  cause  of  the 
farmers  leading  so  beastly  a  manner  of  life  and  savage 
condition,  lying  and  living  together  with  his  beast,  in 
one  house,  in  one  room,  in  one  bed — that  is,  clean  straw, 
or  rather  a  foul  dunghill.”§ 

Dobbs,  the  author  of  the  “  List  of  Absentees,”  under 
the  name  of  “  Prior,”  complains  that,  “  our  common 
people  are  very  poorly  clothed,  go  bare-legged  half  the 


*  “  Statistical  Inquiry,”  ap.  Sadleir,  p.  18. 

f  “  Political  Anat.  of  Ireland,”  tracts,  p.  379. 

t  Ibid.,  tracts,  pp.  10,  327,  351,  354. 

§  “  View  of  the  State  of  Ireland.”  Works,  vol.  vi.  p.  134. 
Sadleir,  pp.  12,  13. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


341 


year,  and  very  rarely  taste  of  that  flesh  meat  with  which 
we  so  much  abound,  but  are  pinched  in  every  article  of 
life.”  And  again,  “  our  weavers  are  starving  for  want  of 
employment.”* 

And  when  this  was  written  the  population  of  Ireland 
little  exceeded  2,000,000,  being,  according  to  the  “Estab¬ 
lished  Clergy’s  ”  return,  only  2,010,221  in  1731,  or  two 
years  after  the  publication  of  the  “  List.” 

Almost  in  the  same  terms  does  Swift  describe  the  con¬ 
dition  of  the  multitude  throughout  his  own  day:  “The 
families  of  farmers,  who  pay  great  rents ,  living  in  nastiness 
and  filth,  on  buttermilk  and  potatoes,  without  a  shoe  or 
stocking  to  their  feet,  or  a  house  so  convenient  as  an 
English  hogsty  to  receive  them.”!  Nor  did  the  patriotic 
dean  fail  to  refer  this  squalid  misery  to  its  proper  cause, 
which  was  not  surplus  population,  but  absenteeism,  rack- 
rentism,  &c.,  for,  says  he,  “  these  are  the  comfortable 
sights  which  await  an  absentee,  who  may  be  induced  to 
travel  for  once  amongst  them  to  learn  their  language,” 
&c4 

Primate  Boulter,  the  intimate  friend  of  Dobbs,  adds 
his  testimony  to  that  of  his  protegi.  “If  our  crops  fail,” 
said  he,  “  or  yield  indifferently,  our  poor  have  not  money 
to  buy  bread.  This  was  the  case  in  1725,  and  last  year, 
and  without  a  prodigious  crop  will  be  more  so  this  year. 
When  I  went  my  visitation  last  year,  barley,  in  some 
inland  places,  sold  at  six  shillings  the  bushel,  to  make 
bread  of ;  and  oatmeal,  the  bread  of  the  North,  sold  for 
twice  or  thrice  its  usual  price.  We  met  all  the  roads 
full  of  whole  families  who  had  left  their  houses  to  beer 
abroad,  since  their  neighbors  had  nothing  to  relieve 
them  with.  And  as  the  winter  subsistence  of  the  poor 

*  “  List  of  Ab?.,”  pp.  32-8.  +  “  Short  View,”  as  above. 

t  Ibid, 


342 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


is  chiefly  potatoes,  this  scarcity  drove  the  poor  to  begin 
with  their  potatoes  before  they  were  full  gro  wn,  so  that 
they  have  lost  half  the  benefit  of  them,  and  have  spent 
their  stock  two  months  sooner  than  usual.  And  oatmeal 
is,  at  this  distance  from  harvest,  in  many  parts  of  the 
kingdom,  three  times  the  customary  price ;  so  that  this 
summer  will  be  more  fatal  to  us  than  the  last,  when,  I 
fear,  many  hundreds  perished  of  famine.”*  Elsewhere,  in 
a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  he  says  :  “  I  am  sorry 
I  am  obliged  to  give  your  grace  so  melancholy  an  account 
of  the  state  of  this  kingdom  .  .  .  suffering  little  less  than 
a  famine  every  other  year.”f  And  this  chronic  state  of 
famine,  at  that  time,  may  well  account  for  the  otherwise 
inexplicable  decrease  of  population  from  2,317,374  souls 
in  1725,  to  2,010,221  in  1731 ;  two  years  after  the  date 
of  the  letter  to  his  grace.  In  1740-41,  the  poor  perished 
by  thousands  of  sheer  want.  So,  likewise,  in  1757,  when 
the  king  transmitted  £20,000  to  the  lord  lieutenant  to 
be  expended  in  relief ;  in  1765,  when  provisions  reached 
to  famine  prices  ;J  in  1770-71,  when  there  were  over 
forty  acres  of  land  to  every  family  in  the  island.§ 

During  the  whole  century  above  sketched,  we  find 
epidemics,  as  a  natural  consequence,  following  in  the  wake 
of  scarcity.  “  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  population,” 
says  Sir  William  Temple,  “  were  periodically  swept  off 
by  the  plague  ”|| — a  kind  of  fever  which  prevailed  during 
a  good  portion  of  the  seventeenth  century.^!  “  In  1 G84,” 
says  Sadleir,  “  a  very  severe  epidemic  occurred.  Four 
years  afterwards  it  again  made  its  appearance.  About 
the  year  1708  a  similar  calamity  was  again  general ;  and 

*  “Letters,”  vol.  i.  p.  222.  f  Ibid.  p.  241. 

t  “  Commercial  Restraints,”  pp.  47-GO,  and^astfi/ra. 

§  Wakefield’s  “Account,”  vol.  ii.  p.  10. 

|[  Works,  vol.  iii.  p.  7. 

*|[  Dr.  Boate’s  “Nat.  Hist,  of  Ireland,”  Sadleir,  p.  23. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


343 


it  returned  after  a  much  shorter  interval  than  before,  and 
raged  in  1718,  1719,  1720,  and  1721 ;  for  it  is  a  lament¬ 
able  fact  that  the  fevers  of  Ireland — especially  those  of  the 
earlier  periods  alluded  to — seldom  subsided  in  less  than 
three  or  four  years.  .  . .  Then,  again,  from  1728  to  1732 
there  was  a  fever  of  five  years’  continuance  experienced, 
after  an  intermission  of  seven  years  only.  The  fever 
returned  again  after  a  lapse  of  eight  years,  and  continued, 
indeed,  a  much  shorter  time  than  before ;  but  it  more 
than  compensated,  in  the  eyes  of  our  modern  philoso¬ 
phers,  for  the  shortness  of  its  duration,  by  the  ‘  clearance  * 
it  made  of  the  ‘  redundant  numbers.’  In  this  dreadful 
visitation,  Dr.  Eutty,  the  accurate  historian  of  the  wea¬ 
ther,  health,  &c.,  of  Ireland,  says  one-fifth  part  of  the 
people  perished.  A  lower  estimate — indeed  the  lowest — 
computes  the  victims  of  this  dreadful  period  at  80,000  ! 
Dr.  Short  says  it  was  little  short  of  the  plague  in  fatality. 
Now  at  this  period  there  were  probably  fewer  than 
seventy  inhabitants  to  every  square  mile  in  one  of  the 
most  fertile  countries  in  the  world.  Will,  then,  any  of 
our  anti-populationists,  dare  to  attribute  this  calamity  to 
the  laws  of  population  and  Providence  ?  On  the  contrary, 
it  fell  the  heaviest  where  the  population  was  thinnest, 
that  is,  in  the  province  of  Connaught,  and  in  Galway, 
in  that  province,  the  thinnest-inhabited  county  in  the 
country.”"1 

It  would  be  impossible  to  strengthen  the  force  of  these 
remarks.  Had  the  population  been  eight  millions  instead 
of  an  average  of  two  millions  and  a  fraction  during  that 
century,  our  M‘Cullochs,  Malthuses,  Peels  (junior),  and 
company,  would  have  found  in  the  “  redundant  popula¬ 
tion”  an  easy  explanation  of  the  combined  calamities  of 

*  Sadleir,  pp.  23,  24 ;  quoting  Eutty,  Short,  Baker,  and 
Cheyne. 


344 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


famine  and  pestilence ;  but,  with  even  a  deficient  popu¬ 
lation,  they  will  have  to  travel  elsewhere  in  search  of 
explanatory  causes.  Will  rack-rents,  absenteeism,  neglect 
of  industry,  commercial  and  agricultural,  evil  legislation, 
and  all  their  concomitants,  account  for  the  singular 
phenomena1?  “The  greatest  and  most  fundamental  defect 
in  this  kingdom,”  says  Petty,  “  is  the  want  of  inhabi¬ 
tants  yet  the  insufficient  population  went  on  starving 
to  death.  “  At  least  five  children  in  six  who  are  born,” 
says  Swift,  “  lie  a  dead  weight  for  want  of  employment : 
....  above  one-half  of  the  souls  of  this  kingdom  sup¬ 
ported  themselves  by  beggary  and  thieving,  two-tliirds 
whereof  would  be  able  to  get  their  bread  in  any  other 
country  in  the  world.”*  Writing  in  1729,  he  says  there 
were  “  a  round  million  (half  the  entire  population)  of 
creatures  in  human  figure,  whose  sole  subsistence,  put 
into  a  common  stock,  would  leave  them  in  debt  two 
million  pounds  sterling,  adding  those  who  are  beggars  by 
profession  to  the  bulk  of  farmers,  cottagers,  and  laborers, 

who  are  beggars  in  effect . In  the  list  of  beggars,” 

says  he,  “  I  reckon  all  cottagers,  laborers,  and  four-fifths 
of  the  farmers.  ”f 

The  very  state  of  things  that  suggested  his  “  Modest 
Proposal  for  preventing  the  children  of  the  poor  people 
from  being  a  burden  to  their  parents,”  will  furnish  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  extent  of  Irish  misery  at  the  time  it 
was  written. 

“  The  number  of  souls,”  writes  he,  “  in  this  kingdom 
being  usually  reckoned  one  million  and  a  half  ’  of  these  I 
calculate  there  may  be  about  two  hundred  thousand 
couple  whose  wives  are  breeders  ;  from  which  number  I 
subtract  thirty  thousand  couple  who  are  able  to  maintain 
their  own  children  (although  I  apprehend  there  cannot 


*  “  Maxims  Controlled.” 


t  “Modest  Proposal.” 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


345 


be  so  many  under  the  present  distresses  of  the  kingdom). 
....  The  question,  therefore,  is,  how  this  number 
(one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  children  annually 
born)  shall  be  reared  and  provided  for?  which,  as  I  have 
already  said,  under  the  present  situation  of  affairs,  is 
utterly  impossible  by  all  the  methods  hitherto  proposed. 
....  I  do,  therefore,  offer  it  to  the  publick  considera- 
tion,  that,  of  the  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  chil¬ 
dren  already  computed,  twenty  thousand  may  be  reserved 
for  breed . That  the  remaining  one  hundred  thou¬ 

sand  may,  at  a  year  old,  be  offered  in  sale  to  persons  of 
quality  and  fortune  through  the  kingdom  ;  always  advis¬ 
ing  the  mother  to  let  them  suck  plentifully  in  the  last 
month,  so  as  to  render  them  plump  and  fat  for  a  good 
table.  ...  I  have  reckoned,  upon  a  medium,  that  a  child 
just  born  will  weigh  twelve  pounds,  and,  in  a  solar  year, 
if  tolerably  nursed,  will  increase  to  twenty-eight  pounds. 

“  I  grant  this  food  will  be  somewhat  dear,  and,  therefore, 
very  proper  for  landlords ,  who,  as  they  have  already 
DEVOURED  MOST  OF  THE  PARENTS,  HAVE  THE  BEST 
TITLE  TO  THE  children.”  After  dilating  on  the  succu¬ 
lent  properties  of  infant  flesh  for  nurses — “  I  have  already 
computed  the  charge  of  nursing  a  beggar’s  child  (in 
which  list  I  reckon  all  cottagers,  laborers,  and  four- 
fifths  of  the  farmers)  to  be  about  two  shillings  per  annum, 
rags  included  ;  and  I  believe  no  gentleman  would  re¬ 
pine  to  give  ten  shillings  for  the  carcass  of  a  good  fat 
child,  which,  I  have  said,  will  make  four  dishes  of  excel¬ 
lent,  nutritive  meat,  when  he  has  only  some  particular 
friend  or  his  own  family  to  dine  with  him.  Thus  the 
squire  will  learn  to  be  a  good  landlord,  and  grow  popu¬ 
lar  among  the  tenants  ;  the  mother  will  have  eight  shil¬ 
lings  neat  profit,  and  be  fit  for  work  till  she  produces 
another  child.”*  He  then  suggests  to  the  “  more 

*  “Modest  Proposal.” 


34  G 


TIIE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


thrifty  (such  as  the  times  require)  to  flay  the  carcass? 
the  skin  of  which,  artificially  dressed,  would  make  admir¬ 
able  gloves  for  ladies  and  summer  boots  for  fine  gentle¬ 
men  “  the  establishment  of  shambles,  butchers  being 
sure  not  to  be  wanting,”  and  the  “  buying  the  children 
alive,  and  dressing  them  hot  from  the  knife  as  we  do 
roasting  pigs.” 

Was  there  ever  such  a  satire  on  the  political  economy 
of  a  country  ?  What  would  he  suggest  were  he  to  live 
to-day,  when  our  landlords  devour  parents,  children,  land, 
and  all  ? 

Having  thus  disposed  of  the  infants,  he  came  to  the 
grown-up  portion  of  the  “  beggars,”  and,  at  the  sugges¬ 
tion  of  “a  very  worthy  person,  a  true  lover  of  his 
country,”  recommends  that  “  the  want  of  venison  might 
be  well  supplied  by  the  bodies  of  young  lads  and  maidens, 
not  exceeding  fourteen  years,  nor  under  twelve — so 
great  a  number  of  both  sexes  being  ready  to  starve  in 

every  country  for  want  of  work  and  service . 

Neither,  indeed,  could  he  deny  that,  if  the  same  use 
were  made  of  several  plump,  young  girls  in  this  town 
(Dublin),  who,  without  one  single  groat  to  their  fortunes, 
cannot  stir  abroad  without  a  chair,  and  appear  at  a  play¬ 
house  and  assemblies  in  foreign  fineries,  which  they 
never  will  pay  for,  the  kingdom  would  not  be  the  worse.” 
And,  lastly,  as  to  “  these  vast  number  of  poor  people 
who  are  aged,  diseased,  and  maimed,”  he  was  “  not  in 
the  least  pained  upon  that  matter,  because  it  was  very 
well  known  that  they  were  every  day  dying  and  rotting 
by  cold ,  famine ,  and  filth ,  and  vermin ,  as  fast  as  could  be 
reasonably  expected.”* 

Such  is  the  picture  of  Irish  wretchedness  when  oui 
population  was. only  “one  million  and  a  half.” 


*  Works,  vol.  ix.,  pp.  289-90-1-2,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


347 


He  meets  the  “  one  objection  which  could  possibly  be 
raised  against  his  proposal” — ‘  ‘  the  number  of  our  people 
would  thereby  be  much  lessened  in  the  kingdom.”  But 
this,  he  freely  owns,  “  was  indeed  his  principal  design 
in  offering  it  to  the  world  ;”  besides  that,  “  it  would 
greatly  lessen  the  number  of  Papists  with  whom  we  were 
yearly  overrun,  being  the  principal  breeders  of  the  nation, 
as  well  as  our  most  dangerous  enemy.”  He  again  im¬ 
presses  upon  us  that  he  “calculated  his  remedy  for  this 
one  individual  kingdom  of  Ireland,  and  for  no  other  that 
ever  was,  is,  or,  he  thought,  ever  could  be,  upon  the  earth.” 

Pursuing  the  same  strain  of  overwhelming  sarcastic 
irony,  he  says  :  “  Therefore,  let  no  man  talk  to  me  of 
other  expedients,  of  taxing  our  absentees  at  5s.  a  pound; 
of  using  neither  clothes  nor  household  furniture  except 
what  is  of  our  own  growth  and  manufacture ;  of  utterly 
rejecting  the  materials  and  instruments  that  promote 
foreign  luxury;  of  curing  the  expensiveness  of  pride, 
vanity,  idleness,  and  gaming  in  our  women ;  of  introduc¬ 
ing  a  vein  of  parsimony,  prudence,  and  temperance  ;  of 
learning  to  love  our  country,  in  the  want  of 
WHICH  we  DIFFER  from  Laplanders,  and  the  inhabi¬ 
tants  of  Topinamboo  ;  of  quitting  our  animosities  and 
factions,  nor  acting  any  longer  like  the  Jews,  who  were 
murdering  one  another  at  the  very  moment  their  city 
•was  taken ;  of  being  a  little  cautious  not  to  sell  our  country 
and  conscience  for  nothing ,”  and  “  teaching  landlords 

AT  LEAST  ONE  DEGREE  OF  MERCY  ”  !  !  !* 

So  also,  at  present,  let  us  pass  all  such  natural  reme¬ 
dies  for  the  national  ailment  by  ;  let  luxury,  and  oppres¬ 
sion,  and  disregard  of  country  in  high  places  have  their 
full  swing ;  let  landlords  be  still  exempt  from  the  duty 
of  learning  even  “  one  degree  of  mercy  ;”  only  let  the 
people,  infants,  young,  old,  men,  women,  all,  “  go  with  a 


*  Ibid. 


348 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


vengeance,”  and  our  now  “blighted,  blasted”  island  is 
converted  forthwith  into  an  El  Dorado  of  wealth,  com¬ 
fort,  and  happiness. 

In  conclusion,  he  asks  “  the  parents  of  those  mortals 
whether  they  would  not,  at  this  day,  think  it  a  great 
happiness  to  have  been  sold  for  food  at  a  year  old,  in  the 
manner  prescribed,  and  thereby  have  avoided  such  a 
perpetual  ordeal  of  misfortunes  as  they  have  since  gone 
through,  by  the  oppression  of  landlords,  the  impossi¬ 
bility  of  paying  rent  without  money  or  trade,  the  want  of 
common  sustenance,  with  neither  house  nor  clothes  to 
cover  them  from  the  inclemency  of  the  weather,  and  the 
most  inevitable  prospect  of  entailing  the  like  or  greater 
miseries  upon  their  breed  for  ever.”* 

During  the  eighty  years  succeeding  the  Revolution, 
when  the  population  did  not  average  2,000,000,  corn 
was  continually  imported,  and  the  masses  were  starving. 
Now,  however,  we  export  in  immense  quantities,  and 
the  producers  are  left  either  to  starve  or  to  export  them¬ 
selves. 

Sadleir,  quoting  from  a  useful  little  work  called 
“Statistical  Illustrations,”  gives  the  amount  of  exports 
as  follows : — 

“  With  an  ignorance  and  pertinacity  presumptuous  as 
the  expatiations  and  assertions  adverted  to  above  are 
fallacious  and  delusive,  it  is  asserted  that  the  misery  of 
Ireland  arises  from  an  excess  of  population  beyond  the 
power  of  the  country  to  supply  subsistence ;  but  in  the 
face  of  such  an  assertion,  and  whilst  an  appeal  was  being 
made  to  England  to  rescue  Ireland  from  famine,  and  a 
subscription  of  £304,181,  in  1822,  was  raised  on  that 
plea  ;  £30,882  only  of  which  was  expended  for  articles 
of  subsistence,  and  £9,374  in  potatoes  for  seed,  the 


*  Works,  vol,  ix.,  p.  298. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


349 


remainder  being  distributed  in  money  (paid,  no  doubt, 
in  rent),  Ireland  exported  articles  of  subsistence  alone  to 
no  less  an  amount  (at  the  very  reduced  value  of  that 
year)  than  £4,518,832  ;  and  in  the  three  years,  1821, 
1822,  1823,  to  the  enormous  amount  of  upwards  of 
£16,000,000;  whilst  nearly  the  whole  of  the  remaining 
exports,  to  the  amount  of  upwards  of  £10,000,000  more, 
in  those  three  years,  were  composed  of  the  products  of 
Irish  soil.”* 

The  value  of  provisions  exported  to  Great  Britain 
in  1821,  was  £5,338,838;  while  in  1825  (a  famine  year) 
it  reached  the  figure  of  £7,048,936 — all  finding  its  way 
into  the  landlords’  pockets,  while  the  producers  were 
starving.  In  other  words,  then,  as  now,  the  industrious 
producers  of  food — they  on  whom  the  whole  community 
has  to  rely  for  its  very  existence,  on  whom  the  whole 
machinery  of  society  has  to  turn  as  on  its  fulcrum — had 
to  part  with  the  very  necessaries  of  life  in  order  to  enable 
the  idle,  the  indolent,  the  useless  drones  of  the  human 
hive,  to  gorge  themselves  with  every  luxury. 

“  There  is  no  country  in  Europe,”  says  “  Prior,”  a 
hundred. and  forty  years  ago,  “which  produces  and  ex¬ 
ports  so  great  a  quantity  of  beef,  butter,  tallow,  hides, 
and  wool,  as  Ireland  does ;  and  yet  our  common  people 
are  very  poorly  clothed,  go  bare-legged  half  the  year,  and 
very  rarely  taste  of  that  flesh  meat  with  which  we  do  so 
much  abound.  We  pinch  ourselves  of  every  article  of 
life,  and  export  more  than  we  can  well  spare,  with  no 
other  effect  or  advantage  than  to  enable  our  gentlemen 

and  ladies  to  live  more  luxuriantly  abroad . And 

they  are  not  content  with  this ;  they  reproach  us  with 
our  poverty  at  the  same  time  that  they  take  away  our 
money.”  t 

*  “Evils  of  Ireland,”  p,  8.  f  “List of  Absentees,”  p.  33. 


350 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  The  Dublin  Society,”  writes  Sadleir,  11  proves,  by  an 
exact  calculation,  that  they  might  maintain  twenty  poor 
families  for  a  whole  year  with  the  quantity  of  beef  and 
mutton  which  they  exported  for  buying  a  lady’s  head¬ 
dress.”* * * § 

Bishop  Berkley,  among  other  instructive  queries,  asked 
over  a  hundred  years  ago,  “  whether  it  is  possible  the 
country  should  be  well  improved  while  our  beef  is  ex¬ 
ported,  and  our  laborers  live  on  potatoes  V 

“  Whether  the  quantities  of  beef,  mutton,  wool,  and 
leather  exported  from  this  island  can  be  reckoned  the 
superfluities  of  a  country  where  there  are  so  many  natives 
naked  and  famished  rl 

“Whether  the  way  to  make  men  industrious  be  not  to 
let  them  taste  the  fruits  of  their  industry  'l  and  whether 
the  laboring  ox  should  be  muzzled  V1 1 

We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  when  Ireland 
was  least  populous  she  was  an  importer  of  food,  and  her 
people  were  starving.  When  most  populous  she  largely 
exported  ;  yet  her  people  starved  all  the  same.  In  fact, 
some  of  the  very  best  authorities,  such  as  Sir  William 
Temple,  Lord  Clarendon,  Dean  Swift,  Sir  William  Petty, 
even  attribute  the  prevailing  want  of  food,  in  their  day, 
.  to  the  want  of  people.  J 

“  The  greatest  and  most  fundamental  defect  of  this 
kingdom,”  says  the  latter,  “  is  the  want  of  people.§ 

“  For  several  years  past,”  says  the  author  of  “  A  Plea 
for  Toleration,”  “  we  live  mostly  on  the  bread  imported 
hither  from  foreign  nations.  We  even  import  corn  from 
North  America,  and  we  suffer  many  of  our  people  to 

*  “  Ireland,  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies,”  p.  €2. 

f  “  A  Plea  for  Toleration,”  supra. 

X  See  Sadleir,  p.  26. 

§  “  Anat.  of  Ireland,”  Tracts,  p.  388.  Sadleir,  ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


351 


transport  themselves  thither,  and  for  ever,  to  cultivate 

for  us . For  four  years  past  this  importation  of 

corn  has  cost  us  annually,  on  an  average,  better  than 
£300,000 . Let  the  bread  of  foreign  lands  feed 


our  manufacturers.  You  put  the  useful  arts,  and  the 
most  useful  of  all,  the  linen  manufacture,  into  the  hands 
of  a  step-dame.  In  the  arms  of  so  unnatural  a  nurse,  the 
child  must  certainly  be  stinted,  and  until  you  restore  it 
to  the  true  mother  it  cannot  thrive.”* 

And  when  the  above  was  written,  the  population  was 
only  2,690,  556.f 

Yet  while  some  were  left  to  “  transport  themselves,” 
the  majority  had  “  to  gain  a  livelihood  by  thieving 
at  home,  others  by  earning  abroad  the  rents  of  their 
plots  and  potato  gardens,  while  the  wives  and  children 
of  the  greater  part  infest  every  quarter  of  the  island  in 
the  shape  of  naked  beggars.”  ] 

Yes,  indeed,  in  1777  Ireland  “grew  her  own  bread 
but  the  most  precious  part  of  it  she  had  to  export, 
getting  nothing  in  return  but  luxuries  for  landlords. 
Even  the  very  “  grain  ”  that  was  imported  went  chiefly 
into  his  kitchen.  They  who  raised  the  grain  had  to  live 
on  the  potato.  Even  they  who  raised  the  beef  and 
mutton  had  to  put  up  with  a  like  fare,§ 

Paley  refers  as  follows  to  the  “  two  things  on  which 
the  prosperity  of  any  country  rests  :  ”  “  The  effect  of 

trade  upon  agriculture,  the  process  of  which  we  have 
been  endeavoring  to  describe,  is  visible  in  the  neigh¬ 
borhood  of  trading  towns,  and  in  those  districts  which 
carry  on  a  communication  with  the  markets  of  trading 
towns.  The  husbandmen  are  busy  and  skilful ;  the 
peasantry  laborious ;  the  land  is  managed  to  the  best 

•  #  ■  ' 

*Pp.  31-2.  f  Hearth-money  Collectors’  Census. 

J  “A  Plea  for  Toleration.”  §  Ibid. 


352 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


advantage,  and  double  the  quantity  of  corn  or  herbage 
(articles  which  are  ultimately  converted  to  human  pro¬ 
vision)  raised  from  it,  of  what  the  same  soil  yields  in 
remoter  and  more  neglected  parts  of  the  country.  Wher¬ 
ever  a  thriving  manufactory  finds  means  to  establish 
itself,  a  new  vegetation  springs  up  about  it.  I  believe  it 
is  true,  that  agriculture  never  arrives  at  any  consider¬ 
able,  much  less  at  highest,  degree  of  perfection,  when  it  is 
not  connected  with  trade ;  that  is,  when  the  demand  for 
the  produce  is  not  increased  by  the  consumption  of 
trading  cities.  Let  it  be  remembered,  then,  that  agri¬ 
culture  is  the  immediate  source  of  human  provision ; 
that  trade  conduces  to  the  production  of  provisions 
only  as  it  promotes  agriculture ;  that  the  whole  system 
of  commerce,  vast  and  varied  as  it  is,  hath  no  other 
public  importance  than  its  subserviency  to  this  end.”* 

“  By  no  means,”  replies  the  late  Lord  Carlisle,  “  as  far 
as  Ireland  is  concerned.  She  is  the  ‘  fruitful  mother  of 
flocks  and  herds,’  and,  with  her  being  so,  we  must  make 
her  trade  consistent.”  Her  trade,  however,  is  ruined. 
There  were  more  bankruptcies  throughout  the  country 
within  the  last  five  years,  even  than  during  any  half¬ 
decade  of  the  present  century — and  consolidation  goes 
on. 

But,  in  confirmation  of  Paley’s  doctrine,  we  have  the 
great  fact  that,  not  alone  did  trade,  commerce,  and 
agriculture  advance  pari  passu  during  the  eighteen  ante- 
Union  years,  but  that  they  progressed  with  strides  un¬ 
paralleled  in  the  history  of  any  country.  “  It  is  uni¬ 
versally  admitted,”  said  Mr.  Cooke,  “  that  no  country  in 
the  world  ever  made  such  rapid  advances  as  Ireland  has 
done  in  all  these  respects”  (“population-,  agriculture, 
manufactures,  wealth,  and  prosperity”). t  “  There  is 

*  “  Moral  Philosophy.”  f  “  Arguments  for  tlie  Union,”  1799. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


353 


not  a  nation  in  tlie  habitable  globe  which  has  advanced 
in  cultivation  and  commerce,  in  agriculture  and  manu¬ 
factures,  with  the  same  rapidity  in  the  same  period” 
(1798).  So  that,  of  the  decaying  trade  of  Ireland,  we 
have  a  sufficient  explanation  in  the  wholesale  grazing 
system. 

And  for  the  melancholy  truth  of  this  statement,  we 
have  only  to  walk  the  streets  of  any  town  in  Ireland, 
and  especially  those  about  which  the  clearance  system 
has  been  extensively  carried  on.  There  is  Westport,  for 
instance,  Castlebar,  Ballina,  Ballinrobe,  Hollymount, 
Tuam,  Galway,  Loughrea — what  a  forlorn  aspect  they 
present  to  the  eye  of  the  stranger !  what  a  contrast  to 
their  appearance  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  !  Tumble- 
down  houses,  empty  shops,  unemployed  tradesmen, 
anxious-looking  idlers  vainly  seeking  for  work — such  is 
the  rule  ;  and  all  this  the  result  of  depopulation,  as  im¬ 
politic  as  it  was  heartless. 

But,  to  revert  to  the  topic  directly  under  considera¬ 
tion,  let  us  consider  a  little  further  evidence  on  the 
subject. 

In  1822,  when  the  people  were  dying  by  tens  of 
thousands  of  famine,  Cobbet  assures  us  that  “  thousands 
of  quarters  of  corn  had  been  imported  every  week  from 
Ireland  to  England.”* 

Nearly  forty  years  ago,  in  1830,  Mr.  Butler  Bryan, 
already  referred  to,  expresses  his  censure  of  Irish  land¬ 
lords,  and  his  estimate  of  the  country’s  resources,  in  the 
following  terms : — 

“  If,”  writes  he,  “  the  landlords  were  compelled  by  a 
labor  rate  to  do  their  duty,  there  cannot  be  the  slightest 
doubt  that  Ireland  would  give  employment  to  more  than 
her  own  population. 

*  Register ,  July,  1822. 

Z 


354 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“  With  all  the  sources  of  productive  labor  for  an  in¬ 
creasing  population,  the  emigration  scheme  is  a  political 
bubble — the  worst  offspring  of  the  wildest  and  most 
mischievous  reveries  of  Malthus. 

“  However  interested  individuals  may  seek  to  disguise 
the  fact,  it  is  alone  to  the  pressure  of  the  population,  in 
almost  every  country,  that  mankind  are  indebted  for 
their  deliverance  from  oppression  ;  it  is  the  urgent  wants 
of  an  increasing  population  that  have  forced  legislators 
to  reform  bad  laws,  and  have  instigated  the  people  to 
co-operate  for  their  common  benefit.”* 

The  following  table  conveys  its  own  lesson.  It  is 
taken  from  the  Eeport  of  the  Select  Committee  on  the 
State  of  Ireland,  1830,  also  : — 


Year. 

Exports  to  Great  Britain 

£ 

s. 

d. 

1801 

.  3,270,350 

12 

0 

1805 

4,067,717 

1 

7 

1809 

.  5,316,557 

5 

1 

1813 

.  6,746,353 

12 

10 

1817 

...  •  ...  4,722,7  66 

0 

3 

1821 

.  5,338,83 8 

4 

6 

1825 

.  7,048,936 

5 

6 

Add  to  this  the  amount  of  provisions  annually  supplied 
to  the  navy  and  merchant  vessels  in  Irish  ports,  and  we 
may  fairly  approximate  to  the  figure  of  Irish  produce 
consumed  abroad,  while  the  producers  starve  at  home. 
Indeed,  these  estimates  must  be  under  the  mark;  for  the 
amount  exported  from  Waterford  alone  in  one  year,  1829, 
was  valued  at  £2,136,934.t  From  Limerick,  during  the 
three  years  ending  the  famine' year  of  1822,  the  exports 
amounted  to  £1,685,256,  while  in  1829  it  rose  to 

*  “  Practical  View  of  Ireland,”  p.  287.  t  Ibid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


355 


'  -  * 


.£3,279,914,  all  raw  material,  and  chiefly  articles  of 
consumption — human  food ;  yet  they  whose  sweat  raised 
it  had  to  part  with  it  themselves,  and  send  its  price 
through  the  “  office”  and  “  agent”  to  the  Lord  Spend- 
thrifts  and  Captain  Bankrupts,  who  squandered  it  in 
excesses'  abroad,  while  themselves  and  their  families  were 
gnawed  with  hunger  at  home. 

I  find  the  following  table  in  Sadleir,  p.  31: — 


IRELAND. 

Corn  imported  on  an  average  of  six 
years,  ending  1725. 
Copulation,  2,300,000;  or,  71  on  a 
square  mile. 

Corn  exported  in  1S21. 

Population,  0,801,S27;  or,  211  on  a 
square  mile. 

Wheat  . £27,018 

Earley  and  Malt...  7,255 

Hulled  do.  ...  677 

Flour  .  4,0  S3 

£39,033 

Total  value  of  im¬ 
ports  at  prices  of 

1821  . £78,126 

Wheat  . £1,038,937 

Oats  .  959,474 

Barley  .  78,588 

Meal  (wheat)  ...  252,010 

Oatmeal .  37,156 

Total  value  of  ex¬ 
ports  ...  £2,366,165 

On  which  the  able  statistician  remarks  : — 

“  Here,  then,  we  see  demonstrated  the  important 
political  problem,  whether  population  has  a  natural 
tendency  to  increase  faster  than  food  or  otherwise. 
When  Ireland,  in  1725,  only  numbered  71  inhabitants 
on  a  square  mile,  she  imported  grain,  in  ordinary  times, 
to  the  amount  of  20  or  30  thousand  quarters  annually  ;* 
but  when  her  population  on  the  same  space  became 
trebled,  she  not  only  (of  necessity)  subsisted  that 
number — and  certainly  not  worse  than  at  a  former 


*  Public  Accounts. 


336 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


period — but  actually  exported  a  surplus  of  much  above 
a  million  quarters.” 

But,  to  make  the  phenomenon  still  more  remarkable, 
he  furnishes  two  other  columns  of  figures,  to  show  that 
even  with  the  miserable  population  of  1727  the  cattle 
fructified  as  little  as  the  men  : — 


IRELAND. 

Value  of  the  produce  of  Cattle  and 
Sheep  exported  on  the  average 
of  eight  years,  ending  1727. 
Population,  2,300,000;  or,  71  to  each 
square  mile. 

Value  of  the  produc  of  Cattle  and 
Sheep  exported  in  1821. 

Population,  6,801,827  ;  or,  211  to 
each  square  mile. 

Total  average  value,  £623, 177* 

Total  value  ...  £3,705,993f 

And  on  these  figures  he  makes  the  following  commen¬ 
tary  : — 

“  The  argument  might  be  minutely  pursued  through 
the  intervening  period ;  but  it  is  unnecessary.  It  is 
singular  enough,  however,  to  observe  that,  midway  be¬ 
tween  those  two  dates  (1777),  the  population  having  con¬ 
siderably  advanced,  there  was  nearly  a  balance  between 
the  imports  and  exports  of  grain  ;  or,  in  other  words, 
Ireland  about  grew  its  own  bread.  Since,  then,  the 
population  has  rather  more  than  doubled ;  how  has  the 
constant  tendency,  which  our  theorists  perpetually  assert, 
been  manifested  %  By  sextupling  the  agricultural  pro¬ 
duce”! 

Perhaps  the  most  melancholy  instance  of  Irish  starva¬ 
tion,  in  the  midst  of  plenty,  is  found  in  the  dreadful 
famine  of  1846-47.  For  details  of  the  horrors  of  this 

*  Dobbs’  “Essay  on  Trade,”  &c  ,  p.  17.  +  Public  Accounts. 

X  Colqubon  :  “Wealth,  Power,  and  Resources  of  the  Empire,” 

p.  14,  note. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


357 


visitation  I  beg  to  refer  the  reader  to  the  “Transactions 
of  the  Society  of  Friends,”  in  the  perusal  of  which  we  are 
hardly  more  horrified  at  the  scenes  of  unutterable  misery 
reported  of  the  poor,  than  at  the  apathy  and  want  of 
co-operation,  or  pity,  or  sympathy,  on  the  part  of  the 
bulk  of  the  landlords. 

Before  furnishing  the  statistics  of  exports  of  food,  let 
us  glance  at  a  picture  or  two  of  the  ravages  wrought  by 
famine  among  the  people.  Speaking  of  the  village  of 
Cleggan,  on  the  western  coast  of  the  county  Galway,  the 
“  Deport  of  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Friends  ” 
says  :  “  The  distress  was  appalling,  far  beyond  my  power 
of  description  :  I  was  quickly  surrounded  by  a  mob  of 
men  and  women,  more  like  famished  dogs  than  fellow- 
creatures,  whose  figures,  looks,  and  cries,  all  showed  that 
.they  were  suffering  the  ravening  agony  of  hunger. 
....  I  felt  it  was  useless  to  attempt  to  contend  with 

particular  cases  amid  such  a  mass  of  misery . In 

one  cabin  there  were  two  emaciated  men  lying  at  full 
length  on  the  damp  floor,  in  their  ragged  clothes,  too 
weak  to  move,  actual^  worn  down  to  skin  and  bone.  In 
another  a  young  man  lay  ill  of  dysentery ;  his  mother  had 
pawned  everything — even  his  shoes — to  keep  him  alive  ; 
and  I  never  shall  forget  the  resigned,  uncomplaining  look 
with  which  he  told  me  that  all  the  medicine  he  wanted 
was — FOOD!!!  .... 

“In  one  house  (in  Oughterard)  a  man  and  his  wife 
and  four  children  were  said  to  have  died  of  want.” 

After  describing  the  “  Christian  responsibility  ”  rest¬ 
ing  on  all  the  authorities  concerned,  he  writes  :  “  My 
hand  trembles  as  I  write.  The  scenes  of  human  misery 
and  degradation  we  witnessed  still  haunt  my  imagina¬ 
tion,  with  the  vividness  and  power  of  some  horrid, 
tyrannous  delusion,  rather  than  the  features  of  a  sober 
reality.  We  entered  a  cabin  :  stretched  in  one  dark 


358 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


corner,  scarcely  visible,  from  the  smoke  and  rags  that 
covered  them,  were  three  children  huddled  together, 
lying  there  because  they  were  too  weak  to  rise,  pale  and 
ghastly,  their  little  limbs,  on  removing  a  portion  of  the 
dirty  covering,  perfectly  emaciated,  eyes  sunk,  voice 
gone,  and  evidently  in  the  last  stage  of  actual  starvation. 
Crouched  over  the  turf  embers  was  another  form,  wild, 
and  all  but  naked,  scarcely  human  in  appearance.  It 
stirred  not,  nor  noticed  us.  On  some  straw,  soddened 
upon  the  ground,  moaning  piteously,  was  a  shrivelled  old 
woman,  imploring  us  to  give  her  something — baring  her 
limbs  partly,  to  show  how  the  skin  hung  loose  from  the 
bones,  as  soon  as  she  attracted  our  attention.  Above 
her,  on  something  like  a  ledge,  was  a  young  woman, 
with  sunken  cheeks- — a  mother,  I  have  no  doubt — who 
scarcely  raised  her  eyes  in  answer  to  our  enquiries,  but 
pressed  her  hand  upon  her  forehead  with  a  look  of  un¬ 
utterable  anguish  and  despair.  Many  cases  were  widows 
whose  husbands  had  been  recently  taken  off  by  the 
fever . In  many  the  husbands  and  sons  were  pros¬ 

trate  under  that  horrid  disease — the  result  of  long-con¬ 
tinued  famine  and  low  living . We  entered  up¬ 

wards  of  fifty  of  these  tenements.  The  scene  was  invariably 
the  same,  differing  in  little  but  the  number  of  the  sufferers,  or 
the  groups  occupying  the  several  corners  within.  The 
whole  number  was  not  often  to  be  distinguished  until 
— the  eye  having  adapted  itself  to  the  darkness — they 
were  pointed  out,  or  were  heard,  or  some  filthy  bundle  of 
rags  and  straw  was  perceived  to  move.  Perhaps  the  poor 
children  presented  the  mostpiteous  and  heart-rending  spec¬ 
tacle.  Many  were  too  weak  to  stand — their  little  limbs 
attenuated,  except  where  the  frightful  swellings  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  previous  emaciation.  Every  infantile 
expression  had  entirely  departed ;  and,  in  some,  reason 
and  intelligence  had  evidently  flown . In  one  cabin 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


359 


iv as  a  sister,  just  dying,  lying  by  her  brother,  just  dead.  I 
HAVE  WORSE  THAN  THIS  TO  RELATE,  BUT  IT  IS  USELESS, 
mid  they  are,  in  fact,  unfit  ....  When  we  inquired  the 
cause,  the  answer  was  alike  in  all :  £  Tha  sheir  ukrosh — 
Indeed  downright  hunger .’  ”* 

Ex  uno  disco  omnes. 

And  in  this  “  appalling”  state  of  destitution  what  do 
we  find1?  Why,  the  exportation  of  1,875,393  quarters  of 
grain  alone  during  the  year  that  witnessed  these  revolt¬ 
ing  horrors  ;t  while  the  total  exports,  according  to  Mr. 
Martin,  of  Loughhorn,  in  a  letter  published  October, 
1847,  were  valued  at  £15,000,000,  double  enough  to  save 
every  Irish  life  sacrificed  to  the  genius  of  English  poli¬ 
tical  economy  !  ! ! 

I  quote  from  Appendix  15  to  the  famous  sermon  of 
the  illustrious  Bishop  of  Orleans  at  St.  Boch’s,  Paris,  in 
1861,  on  the  occasion  of  the  Partry  evictions  :  “  The  fol¬ 
lowing  are,  according  to  official  returns,  the  details  of 
exportation  from  Ireland  to  England  (for  J uly,  August, 
and  September,  1846,  alone): — 


Wheat 

Qrs. 

...  59,478 

Barley 

...  18,417 

Oats 

...  245,067 

Meal 

...  242,257 

Oatmeal  ... 

...  138,241 

Bullocks  and  heifers. . . 

...  33,850 

Calves  ...  ... 

1,923 

Sheep  and  lambs 

...  56,609 

Pigs 

...  124,762 

££  The  Daily  News  of  October  3rd,  1847,  states  that  £  in 

/ 


*  “  Transactions,”  pp.  163-4. 


f  Thorn. 


360 


THE  IRISH  I ANDLORD 


the  London  markets  the  oats  chiefly  consisted  of  the  last 
harvest  in  Ireland.’  We  read  in  the  Examiner  of  the 
4th  October,  that  in  one  day  there  came  from  Ireland  to 
London  11,050  quarters  of  grain, 

“The  Drogheda  Argus  tells'us  that,  in  the  week  ending 
the  3rd  October,  there  were  shipped  off  from  Drogheda 
1,200  cows,  3,500  sheep  and  pigs,  2,000  quarters  of 
wheat,  211  tons  of  meal,  130  boxes  of  eggs,  besides 
butter,  pork,  &c.  Waterford,  during  the  same  week 
Evening  Post ,  3rd  October),  exported  250  tons  of  meal, 
1,100  sheep  and  pigs,  308  horned  cattle,  5,400  barrels 
of  flour  and  oatmeal,  7,700  firkins  of  butter,  and  2,000 
fletches  of  lard. 

“  From  Newry  there  left  for  England,  in  the  course 
of  five  days,  in  the  end  of  September,  eleven  vessels 
laden  with  wheat,  not  to  speak  of  the  steamboats  that 
start  four  times  a  week,  carrying  cattle,  butter,  eggs, 
&c.,  &c. 

“  In  a  word,  during  the  four  years  of  famine,  Ireland 
exported  four  quarters  of  grain  against  one  imported,  and 
part  even  of  the  imports  was  grain  previously  exported, 
and  came  back  to  the  luckless  consumers  after  its  specu¬ 
lators  had  secured  their  gain. 

“In  Thom’s  ‘Government  Directory’  for  1853  (an 
official  annual),  we  find  the  report  of  Captain  Larcom, 
government  commissary  in  1847,  in  which  he  estimates 
the  produce  of  Ireland  during  that  year  at  16,248,934 
quarters  of  wheat,  and  8,785,144  tons  of  potatoes,  besides 
cattle,  fowl,  &c.,  &c. 

“  This  amount  would  suffice  to  support  sixteen  millions 
of  men.  It  was  consumed,  but  not  by  the  Irish.” 

Could  there  be  a  more  conclusive  reply  to  the  cry  of 
“  surplus”  population?  In  a  year  when  nearly  2,000,000 
out  of  8,000,000  either  died  of  starvation,  or  fled  the 
country  to  avoid  it,  that  country  teemed  with  its  native 

i 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


361 


aliments  so  as  to  support  16,000,000  !  !  !  Who  are  to 
blame  % — The  government  and  the  landlords. 

May  we  not,  then,  fairly  conclude,  with  Sir  E.  Kane, 
that,  with  ordinary  care  and  culture,  with  the  encourage¬ 
ment  and  protection  of  native  industry,  and  especially  of 
her  agriculture,  Ireland  could  support  her  full  20,000,000 
in  plenty  and  comfort.  Yet  a  statesman  lives  who 
blushes  not  to  declare  that,  being  only  five  millions  and 
a  half,  we  are,  as  yet,  a  million  too  many.  So  said  Sir 
Eobert  Peel  last  year  in  his  senatorial  place  and  capacity. 
What  can  Ireland  expect  while  such  men  as  he  have  the 
making  of  our  laws  and  the  measurement  of  our  popula- 
lation  ? 

This  population  is  yearly  growing  less.  Are  the 
material  resources  of  the  country  progressing  on  the 
other  hand  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  official  statistics,  pub¬ 
lished  this  very  year,  show  a  general  “  decrease.”* 

* 

Sir  Eobert  Kane,  as  has  been  stated,  reckons  that  the 
soil  of  Ireland  is  capable,  under  proper  management,  of 
supporting  in  comfort  20,000,000  souls.t  Monsieur  de 
Beaumont  says  25,000,000.  Sir  Arthur  Young  mounts 
his  estimate  to  100,000,000  !  Nor  need  we  wonder 
when  we  read  the  following  in  Wakefield :  “  Mr.  Stepney, 
last  year,  had  two  acres  and  a  half  of  potatoes,  which 
fattened  four  bullocks,  maintained  eighteen  pigs,  pro¬ 
duced  seed  for  four  acres  more,  and  supplied  his  own 
family,  consisting  of  twenty  persons.”§  And  Mr.  Cur- 
wen  informs  us  that  “  one  acre  of  potatoes  would  feed, 
at  least,  ten  persons  the  year  round.”||  Thus,  while  it 
will  take  two  acres  of  grass  to  fatten  two  bullocks,  two 
acres  and  a  half  of  potatoes  will  fatten  double  the  num- 

*  See  Registrar-General’s  returns.  +  “  Industrial  Resources.” 

£  “Tour  through  Ireland,”  vol.  ii. ,  part  2,  p.  24. 

§  “Account  of  Ireland,”  vol.  i.,  p.  450. 

!l  “  Observations  on  the  State  of  Ireland,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  122. 


362 


TIIE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


ber,  along  with  nine  times  the  number  of  pigs,  ten  times 
the  number  of  people,  besides  supplying  seed  for  nearly 
double  the  quantity  of  land.  By  these  remarks,  how¬ 
ever,  I  am  very  far  from  recommending  an  exclusive 
reliance  on  what  Sadleir  calls  “  this  inestimable  root.” 

I  have  now  before  me  the  official  agricultural  returns 
for  1863-4-6,  by  Mr.  Donnelly,  Registrar-General,  and 
glancing  over  their  pages,  I  find  the  ominous  word 
“  Decrease”  prefixed  to  the  several  items  of  “  cereals,” 
“  green  crops,”  “  meadow  and  clover,”  with  the  excep¬ 
tion  of  the  latter  in  1864 — the  total  amount  of  decrease 
for  the  respective  years  being  92,431,  122,437,  128,725  ; 
■while  the  “  decrease  ”  in  population,  or,  at  least,  the 
drain  by  emigration,  was  respectively  80,506,  84,586, 
74,195,  or  249,277 — a  quarter  of  a  million  in  three 
years,  which,  as  compared  with  “  the  four  last  unfavor¬ 
able-years”  (as  he  calls  the  four  years  preceding  ’63), 
might  be  deemed  “  prosperous.” 

A  glance  at  the  statistical  columns  of  the  last  decade 
or  more  of  years,  as  furnished  officially  by  Mr.  Donnelly, 
will  tell  the  terrible  tale  that  we  are  almost  uniformly 
descending  the  incline  of  retrogression  in  all  the  elements 
that  make  a  nation  great  and  strong.  For  instance,  the 
total  value  of  horses,  cattle,  sheep,  and  pigs  in  1855 
was  £33,053,478;  in  1865  it  was  only  £32,817,007; 
while  it  was  a  million  and  a  half  less  than  in  1859,  when 
the  value  was  as  high  as  £35,368,257.  While  I  am 
actually  writing  these  figures  the  yearly  returns  for  1869 
have  just  come  to  hand ;  and  what  do  1  find  1  The  total 
value  of  these  products  less  by  £456,897  this  year  than 
ten  years  ago,  while  the  number  of  acres  “  under  crops  ” 
is  less  by,  in  round  numbers,  180,000  than  it  was  in 
1862.  That  year  it  was  5,753,610.  This  year  it  is  only 
5,575,843,  though  this  is  an  increase  of  27,872  over  last 
year ;  while,  from  January  to  June,  no  less  than  54,246 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


363 


persons,  the  bone  and  sinew  of  the  country,  have  emi¬ 
grated,  “  not  intending  to  return  ,”  being  in  excess  of  last 
year's  return  for  the  same  period,  of  2,639. 

But — worst  of  all ! — the  returns  just  before  me  show  a 
total  decrease  of  acreage  under  crops  this  year,  as  com¬ 
pared  to  1852,  of  273,108  acres,*  while  our  deficit  in 
population  by  emigration  alone,  since  1851,  is,  on  the 
authority  of  the  present  returns,  1,917,077 — within  a 
fraction  of  two  millions  ! !  Thus,  with  our  people,  have 
our  sources  of  national  wealth  dried  up  in  every  single 
department.  A  few  only  have  grown  rich — the  people 
grow  poor  and  fly  and  perish. 

After  showing  that  the  means  of  sustenance  keep  pace 
with  the  increase  of  population,  according  to  an  economic 
law  of  nature,  Mr.  Sadleir  remarks  : — 

“  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  clearly  shown  that  in  every 
country  where  the  inhabitants  have  unhappily  diminished, 
there,  instead  of  the  means  of  subsistence  having  been 
more  liberally  dispensed,  the  population  has  been  in¬ 
variably  still  more  degraded  and  reduced  in  condition 
than  in  numbers  :”+  which  is  literally  true  of  Ireland. 

And  how  is  this  phenomenon  of  the  decay  of  national 
wealth  with  that  of  population  to  be  accounted  for1? 
Very  easily.  By  the  land’s  being  allowed  to  grow 
“  waste,”  or,  as  Swift  says  it,  “  by  giving  up  the  land  of 
the  country  to  beef  and  mutton.”  All  agriculturists 
agree  that  an  acre  of  average  pasture  will  only  badly 
nourish  one  cow,  badly  fatten  one  bullock,  during  the 
year.  Till  that  acre  with  care,  and  it  will  give  you  food 
enough  for  four  at  least.  Now,  nearly  two-thirds  of  the 
“ profitable”  lands  of  the  country,  or  over  10,000,000 
acres,  is  only  giving  grass,  while  only  5,500,000  acres,  in 

*  Vide  Thom  for  1852,  p.  91. 

t  Introduction  to  “  Ireland,  its  Evils  and  its  Remedies.” 


364 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


round  numbers,  is  ‘‘'under  (rops.”  One  acre  cropped  is 
as  productive  as  four  uncropped  ;  therefore,  by  the  pre¬ 
sent  system  of  extensive  grazing  we  reap  only  about  one- 
eighth  of  the  produce  which  our  land,  even  in  its  present 
state  of  defective  cultivation,  might  produce  ;  while,  with 
improved  agriculture,  and  the  stimulus  to  industry  sup¬ 
plied  by  security  of  tenure,  the  net  return  might  be 
doubled,  and  we  could  produce  sixteen  times  as  much  as 
we  actually  do.  Let  us  add  to  this  the  result  of  the 
reclamation  of  the  four  million  acres  now  “  waste,” 
but  capable  of  reclamation,  and  we  will  not  be  far  astray 
in  reckoning  the  annual  return  of  the  land  at  twenty 
times  what  it  now  is  under  the  grazing  system. 

The  soil  is  proverbially  fertile — the  theme  of  every 
foreign  pen  that  has  written  about  the  country.  “  A 
goodly  and  commodious  soil,”  &c.,  says  Spenser  (“View”). 
“Superior  to  England  as  a  soil,”  writes  Leonce  de  Lavergne 
(“Essay  on  Kural  Economy”).  “The  richest  soil  I 
have  ever  seen,”  says  Arthur  Young  (“  Tour  through 
Ireland”).  “  Proverbially  rich,”  says  Kay  (“  Social  Con¬ 
dition  and  Education”),  &c. 

How,  again  and  again  I  ask,  is  this  universal  decay, 
in  a  soil  so  fertile,  to  be  accounted  for  ?  Very  simply,  as 
ever  before,  by  the  fact  that  virtually  the  land  is  left 
wasted.  With  its  ten  million  acres,  and  more,  of  “per¬ 
manent”  pasture,  its  four  million  and  a  half  of  unreclaimed, 
but  reclaimable  land,  what  other  result  could  we  expect1? 
Eeclaim  the  latter,  plough  the  former,  and  your  yearly 
returns  will  be  indefinitely  increased.  England,  with  a 
total  area  of  nearly  33,000,000  acres,  has  only  9,000,000 
acres  in  permanent  pasture,  or  something  less  than  one- 
fourth.  Ireland,  out  of  20,000,000  acres,  has  fully  one- 
half.  The  acre  of  grass  will  but  badly  feed  a  bullock  ; 
an  acre  of  crops  will  go  far  in  feeding  a  family.  There  is 
a  man  living  not  five  hundred  yards  from  my  door,  who 


! 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION.  365 

has  supported,  in  comparative  decency,  a  wife,  an  old 
mother,  and  seven  children,  on  the  produce  of  less  than 
three  acres  of  land.  He  also  feeds  a  cow  and  a  couple  of 
pigs  in  the  year.  These  three  acres,  left  to  themselves, 
would  hardly  supply  food  for  the  cow  and  the  pigs. 

Sir  R.  Kane,  in  his  “  Industrial  Resources,”  quotes, 
among  other  authors,  M.  Moreau  de  Jorme’s  “  Statistique 
de  la  Grande  Bretagne  et  de  Vlrlande”  as  an  authority  for 
the  superior  productiveness  of  Irish  to  English  and  Scotch 
soil. .  The  following  is  his  table  of  proportions  : — 


England. 

Wheat, 

.  18 

Rye, 

.  10 

Barley, 

.  21 

Oats, 

.  16 

Scotland. 

Ireland. 

16 

20 

12 

32 

12 

21 

16 

16 

Give  Ireland  the  agricultural  advantages  and  develop¬ 
ments  of  England  and  Scotland,  and  then  talk  of  scarcity 
or  “  surplus  population.” 


According  to  the  census  of 
superficial  area  of  Ireland  : — 

Arable  or  cultivated 
Waste  or  uncultivated 
Under  water 
Plantations 
Towns  ... 

/ 

Total 


1841,  the  following  is  the 


Acres. 

...  13,464,300 

...  6,295,735 

630,825 
374,482 
42,929 


20,808,271 


Of  the  6,295,735  acres  “waste  land,”  it  is  reckoned  that 
4,600,000  acres  might  be  profitably  reclaimed,  thus 
giving  a  total  of  18,064,300  acres  of  productive,  profitable 
land.  Then  taking  Mr.  Curwen’s  standard  of  the  souls 


3G6 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


to  the  acre  of  potatoes,  were  the  units  to  live,  as  the 
ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred,  on  the  potato  alone,  we 
almost  double  the  estimate  of  Mr.  Young  when  he 
said  the  soil  of  the  country  could  support  100,000,000. 
But,  to  avoid  what  might  appear  to  be  extravagant  cal¬ 
culations,  we  might  allow  at  least  one  person  to  the  acre, 
leaving  a  fair  margin  still  for  “  beef  and  mutton  ”  for  the 
“  gentry.”  And  this  would  almost  bring  up  the  calcula¬ 
tion  to  the  estimate  of  Sir  Robert  Kane,  which  few  will 
affect  to  despise.  So  that,  by  proper  cultivation,  instead 
of  being  four  millions  out  of  five  and  a  half  in  a  state  of 
semi-starvation,  as  the  Irish  people  are  even  at  present, 
we  might  be  20,000,000  living  in  affluent  independence. 

Swift  once  declared  that  “  Ajax  was  mad  when  he 
mistook  the  flock  of  sheep  for  his  enemy,  but  we. shall 
never  be  sober  until  we  have  the  same  way  of  thinking.”* 
If  the  people  once  took  this  notion  into  their  head,  it 
they  realized  the  quaint  sentiment  of  the  honest  Irish 
parson,  how  would  it  fare  with  the  consolidators  and 
mighty  graziers  ?  Of  what  avail  would  their  “  malicious 
injury”  laws — laws  quite  unknown,  like  all  the  other 
landlord  agrarian  laws,  to  England,  but  quite  essential 
for  the  well-being  of  poor,  buffeted  Ireland — be  to  them 
in  such  a  case  ?  What  sight  more  provocative  to  des¬ 
peration  than  that  of  sheep  and  oxen  fattening  on  the 
sites  of  the  very  hearths  round  which  the  happy  though 
humble  family  circle  once  clustered  in  rustic  joy?  Who 
can,  with  any  show  of  justice,  allege  that,  witnessing 
such  sights  in  patience,  and  without  wholesale  retalia¬ 
tion,  the  Irish  are  not  a  long-suffering  race  ?  And  yet 
the  evil  goes  on  unabated,  unredressed.  The  villages 
disappear  year  after  year.  Their  once  happy  homesteads 
are  levelled  with  the  earth ;  and  where  innocent  sport 


*  “Answer  to  a  Memorial,”  p.  21G,  &c. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


3C7 


•\vas  enlivened  by  merry  song,  now  nothing  is  to  be 
witnessed  or  heard  but  the  huge  forms  and  loud  lowing 
and  bleating  of  flocks  and  herds — the  supreme  deity  of 
the  consolidating  landlord. 

How  well  might  it  be  sung  of  any  of  those  villages 
razed  by  my  Lords  Lucan  and  Sligo,  Sir  Eoger  Palmer, 
and  Mr.  Allan  Pollock  : — 

“  Sweet,  smiling  village,  loveliest  of  the  lawn, 

Thy  sports  are  fiecl,  and  all  thy  charms  withdrawn  ; 
Amidst  thy  bowers  the  tyrant’s  hand  is  seen, 

And  desolation  saddens  all  thy  green. 

One  only  master  grasps  the  whole  domain, 

And  half  a  tillage  stints  thy  smiling  plain. 

•  ••••*  • 

And  trembling,  shrinking  from  the  spoiler's  hand, 

Par,  far  away,  thy  children  leave  the  land. 

Ill  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 

Where  wealth  accumulates,  and  men  decay. 

Princes  and  lords  may  flourish,  or  may  fade — 

A  breath  can  make  them,  as  a  breath  has  made ; 

But  a  bold  peasantry,  a  nation’s  pride, 

When  once  destroyed,  can  never  be  supplied.”* 

*  Goldsmith,  “  Deserted  Village.” 


o  no 
OUO 


TIIE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

WASTE  LANDS. 


“  Vy  opinion  is  strongly  in  favor  of  the  possibility  of  a  government  and  com¬ 
panies  (without  the  loss  of  a  farthing)  profitably  employing  all  the  unemployed 
laborers  upon  small  farms  on  the  waste  lands.” — “  Miseries  and  Beauties  of  Ire¬ 
land by  Jonathan  Binn,  Assistant  Agricultural  Cominis.,  etc.,  1S-37,  vul.  iii., 
pp.  445-47. 


It  would  be  almost  “  waste  ”  of  time  to  dwell  on  the 
“importance”  of  reclaiming  so  many  millions  of  land 
capable  of  a  highly  remunerative  cultivation.  The  sub¬ 
ject  is  almost  exhausted.  The  philanthropic  author  of 
the  “  Plea  for  Toleration,”  already  quoted,  writing  just 
ninety-one  years  ago,  says  :  “  About  twenty  years  ago, 
some  gentlemen  of  distinguished  merit  with  the  public 
proposed  to  permit  Papists  to  purchase  our  morasses 
and  mountain  tracts,  as  the  conversion  of  these 
nuisances  into  profitable  lands  would  adorn  the  face 
as  it  would  improve  the  rental  of  our  island.  Through 
such  a  policy  we  could  acquire  a  great  deal,  and 
lose  nothing ;  it  was,  besides,  an  admirable  scheme  for 
employing  our  idle  hands,  and  it  would  be  a  great  addi¬ 
tional  strength  to  ourselves,  to  be  turned  immediately 
against  the  improvers  of  such  wastes  should  they  hereafter 
prove  guilty  of  treachery  or  infidelity  to  government ; 
but  as  the  attention  of  the  legislature  was,  at  the  time, 
drawn  another  way,  the  scheme  was  suspended;  and 
we  should  wonder  that  it  was  never  since  adopted,  had 
not  experience  taught  us  that  the  best  things  are  little 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


309 


regarded  or  absolutely  slighted  through  the  facility  of  ob¬ 
taining  them,  while  those  of  doubtful  operation  are  too 
often  preferred.”* 

He  might  have  added  to  “  doubtful  operation,”  “  and 
positive  mischief,”  for  the  very  laws  then  passed  were 
most  melancholy  in  their  “  operation.” 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  as  we  have  already  seen,  an 
act  was  passed  in  1772  empowering  Papists  “to  take,  on 
a  lease  of  sixty  years,”  bogs  and  wastes,  with  half  an 
acre  of  dry  land  convenient  for  the  sake  of  gravel. 

A  commission,  issued  in  1809  on  this  particular  subject, 
returned  four  different  reports,  never  read,  any  of  them, 
most  likely,  by  those  who  issued  the  commission,  but  still 
available  for  the  curious  on  the  subject. 

In  1819-23-30-35,  select  committees  recommended  the 
reclamation  of  the  “  wastes yet  “waste  ”  they  still  re¬ 
main. 

In  1810  there  was  a  committee  on  Irish  bogs,  and  a 
commission  on  bogs  and  accounts.  In  1811-13-14,  com¬ 
mittees  again  on  bogs.  In  1814  a  commission  also  on  bogs. 
In  1830  a  committee  on  the  poor,  which,  presided  over 
by  Mr.  Spring  Eice,  reported  as  follows  on  the  question 
of  the  “wastes”: — 

“  When  the  immense  importance  of  bringing  into  a 
productive  state  five  millions  of  acres,  now  lying  waste, 
is  considered,  it  cannot  but  be  a  subject  of  regret  and 
surprise-  that  no  greater  progress  in  this  undertaking  has 
yet  been  made.” 

And  the  beneficial  effects  it  thus  describes  : — 

* 

“  If  this  work  could  be  accomplished,  not  only  would 
it  afford  a  transitory  but  a  permanent  demand  for  pro¬ 
ductive  labor,  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  rise  of 
wages  and  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  poor. 
The  severe  pressure  of  clearing  farms  and  ejecting  sub- 


2  A 


*  “Plea,”  ik  41. 


370 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


tenants  might  be  thus  mitigated,  and  the  general  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  peasantry  improved.”  * 

A  treasury  minute  of  1831,  printed  by  order  of  parlia¬ 
ment  in  1831,  strongly  recommended  the  commissioners 
of  woods  and  forests  to  reclaim  the  crown  bog-lands  of 
Ireland.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  portion  of  the  dis¬ 
trict  called  Pobble  O’Keefe  (King  William’s  town),  in 
the  county  Kerry,  consisting  of  400  acres,  belonging  to 
the  crown,  were  accordingly  reclaimed,  and  with  great 
profit  and  advantage. 

This  minute  goes  on  to  say : — 

“  Viewing  this  subject  in  relation  to  the  general  in¬ 
terests  of  the  country,  the  preservation  of  the  peace,  the 
relations  of  landlord  and  tenant,  and  the  extension  of 
wealth,  your  committee,  though  they  reluctantly  depart 
from  what  they  consider  a  general  principle,  venture  to 
recommend  a  trial  of  one  or  two  experiments  on  a  limited 
scale,  at  the  'public  expense.] 

“My  lords,  consider  that  this  interposition  of  the 
crown  may  at  once  afford  an  example  and  give  a  stimulus 
to  the  landed  proprietors  of  Ireland,  as  well  as  bring  to 
the  test  of  experiment  the  various  propositions  of  par¬ 
liamentary  commissions  and  committees  which  recom¬ 
mend,  as  an  object  of  the  highest  national  importance, 
the  reclamation  of  the  waste  lands  of  Ireland,  ascer¬ 
tained  to  exceed  the  area  of  five  million  acres.” 

And  accordingly  Mr.  Weale  was  dispatched  to  examine 
and  report  on  the  question,  and  reported  as  follows  :  “  I 
could  scarcely  credit  the  evidence  of  my  senses,  that  such 
extensive  tracts  of  land,  presenting  a  variety  of  fertile 
soils,  and  combining  many  other  natural  advantages,  which 
were  obviously  capable  of  contributing  largely  to  the 

« '  i 

*  “Committee  on  the  Poor,  1830.” 
t  The  recommendation  of  Mr.  Binn. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


371 


wealth  and  prosperity  of  the  nation,  had  not  participated 
in  the  general  improvement  of  the  country,  and  remained 
neglected  by  the  hand  of  civilization  from  the  period  at 
which  its  ancient  proprietors,  the  last  Earls  of  Desmond, 
had  been  dispossessed  of  it.”  (Spenser,  let  me  remark, 
informs  us  naively  of  how  these  “  last  earls  ”  were  driven 
into  rebellion  with  the  very  view  of  their  dispossession.) 
He  then  recommends  the  reclamation  of  these  crown  lands, 
and  in  reference  to  others  remarks:  “This  lar<re  district 

O 

of  country  contains  but  two  small  villages,  and  only  two 
resident  proprietors,  the  distance  between  whose  houses 
is  thirty-eight  British  miles  !  It  chiefly  belongs  to  absen¬ 
tee  proprietors,  which,  combined  with  its  want  of  roads 
and  the  turbulence  of  the  people,  have  been  the  cause  of 
its  neglected  state.”* 

This  is  evidence  not  to  be  despised;  while  its  ante¬ 
cedent  reasonableness  is  established  by  every  experiment 
hitherto  made.  Among  others,  the  wonderful  results  on 
Lord  Headley’s  estate,  at  Glenbeg,  county  Kerry  also, 
as  .reported  by  Mr.  Wiggins,  an  English  practical  agricul¬ 
turist,  in  his  “  Hints  to  Irish  Landlords,”  attest  its  wisdom 
and  justice.  The  committee  of  1835,  in  reference  to 
this  very  report,  observes  :  “  These  reports  point  out  the 
advantages  derivable  to  the  state,  the  community,  the 
laboring  classes,  and  to  England,  from  reclaiming  the 
waste  lands  of  Ireland,  and  are  founded  on  the  most 
convincing  evidence  of  the  facility  with  which  such  wastes 
may  be  reclaimed.  But  it  appears  from  the  evidence 
obtained  by  your  committee,  that  no  efforts  have  been 
made  to  realize  the  advantages  pointed  out,  except  in  a 
few  instances.  In  these,  however,  the  success  has  been 
most  complete,  and,  therefore,  present  undeniable  proofs 
of  the  practicability  and  importance  of  the  operations 
proposed  in  the  reports.  .  .  . 

*  Report  of  1831. 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


“Unhappily  for  Ireland,  and  for  the  whole  kingdom,  it 
has  not  been  heretofore  considered  sound  policy  to  adopt 
any  public  measures  towards  the  development  of  these 
extraordinary  sources  of  wealth,  or  practically  improving 
the  Irish  peasantry,  and  hence  that  fine  and  fertile  country 
presents  such  misery,  discontent,  and  crime.” 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  conceive  how,  after  so  many 
and  such  emphatic  pronouncements  on  the  subject,  these 
“  wastes  ”  are  still  locked  up,  by  the  pretensions  of  feu¬ 
dalism,  while  the  brawny  arms  that  would  “  turn  them 
into  gold  ”  are  employed  in  enriching  the  fields  and 
extending  the  factories  of  other  and  not  friendly 
countries.  But  they  are  the  “wastes”  of  a  mere  pro¬ 
vince.  And  when  has  England  acted  a  just  or  honest 
part  by  any  dependency  of  hers  1  Mr.  Bryan,  already 
quoted,  suggests — “  a  most  ample  and  beneficial  field  for 
the  employment  of  the  people  upon  the  western  coast  of 
Ireland,  where  there  are  few  or  no  quays  to  land  goods, 
and  the  navigation  of  the  large  rivers  is  impeded  by  bars, 
the  tributary  streams  submerging  large  quantities  of 
land while  in  reference  to  the  “  bogs  ”  of  Ireland  he 
adds  his  testimony  as  follows: — 

“  The  lowest  elevation  of  waste  (improvable)  land  is 
203  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea  at  low  water.  Their 
best  manure,  limestone  gravel,  lies  in  central  hills,  with 
every  facility  to  improvement  by  water  carriage. 

“The  chemical  decomposition  of  peat  soils  is  now  well 
understood ;  so  that,  to  use  the  language  of  Mr.  Aiken 
and  Sir  H.  Davy,  such  soils  may  become  masses  of 
manure ;  and  there  are  strong  grounds  for  belief,  the 
latter  philosopher  declares,  that  any  capital  so  expended 
would,  in  a  few  years,  afford  a  great  and  increasing  inte¬ 
rest,  and  contribute  to  the  wealth  and  prosperity  of  the 
kingdom  at  large. 

“  ‘  The  bogs  of  Ireland,’  says  Young,  ‘  differ  from  the 


SINCE  TIIE  REVOLUTION. 


373 


boggy,  mossy,  fenny  lands  of  England,  with  regard  to 
the  facility  of  reclaiming,  and  still  more  so  in  point  of 
value.  A  vast  proportion  of  the  unreclaimed  land  of 
Ireland  is  undoubtedly  productive  ;  and  nature  has  been 
so  bountiful,  that  little  skill  and  small  expense  will  do 
(according  to  Newenham) ;  while  in  most  other  countries 
the  natural  manures  are  scanty,  in  Ireland  they  are  almost 
everywhere  to  be  found  in  the  greatest  abundance  and 
perfection.’ 

“The  peat  soil  in  the  south  of  Holland,  which  formerly 
resembled  the  bog  land  of  Ireland  is  now  the  garden  of 
Europe. 

“  If  the  proprietors  of  waste  lands  in  Ireland  will  come 
fairly  forward,  give  the  people  long  leases,  and  let  them 
at  a  fair  rent,  proportionate  to  their  yearly  produce,  so 
that  each  party  would  have  a  mutual  interest  in  their 
improvement,  as  is  the  case  with  Italy  and  the  south  of 
France,  and  allow  also  a  pecuniary  expenditure  of  £3  an 
acre,  the  people  will  willingly  give  their  present  waste 
labor  without  any  charge,  in  expectation  of  future  inde¬ 
pendence.^ ”* 

“If”!  No!  the  proprietors  of  Ireland,  as  a  body,  will 
never  “  come  fairly  forward  ”  for  any  good.  They  must 
be  driven  or  dragged,  as  they  are  about  to  be. 

In  1845,  the  Devon  Commission  made  a  similar 
recommendation.  According  to  the  return  of  this  com¬ 
mission,  furnished  by  Mr.  Griffith,  there  were,  in  1845, 
6,290,000  acres  of  pure  waste,  over  2,000,000  of  which 
it  deems  unreclaimable.  But  were  these  2,000,000 
acres  in  the  Pays  cle  Waes,  once  a  desert,  would  they 
remain  long  uncultivated'?  Let  them  be  even  now 
handed  over  rent  free,  for  sixty  years,  to  peasant  pro¬ 
prietors,  to  be  obtained  by  them  at  a  moderate  fine 


*  “  Practical  View,”  pp.  244-6. 


37  4 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


from,  the  state,  and  what  may  we  expect  them  to  be  %  I 
have  seen,  not  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  my  door, 
patches  of  cut-down  bog  and  mere  crags,  which  I  myself 
deemed  unfit  for  reclamation,  and,  at  the  bidding  of  the 
spade  in  willing  hands,  they  have  produced  crops  which 
I  may  call  luxuriant — potatoes  and  oats  lodged. 

The  benefits  of  reclamation  are  illustrated  by  an 
instance  in  the  county  of  Cork,  where  wastes,  valued 
in  their  native  form  at  4d.  per  acre,  were  reclaimed, 
and  estimated  by  Griffith  at  worth  from  7s.  Cd.  to  £1 
per  acre. 

I  don’t  know  how  many  acres  or  thousands  of  acres  of 
land  Captain  Houston  has  from  the  Marquis  of  Sligo,  at 
something  under  Is. — much  at  4d.  per  acre.  Ninety  per 
cent,  of  them  could  be  profitably  reclaimed,  and,  in  the 
course  of  time,  would  be  worth  £1  an  acre.  Thus,  suppos¬ 
ing  only  4,000,000  acres  (in  round  numbers)  of  waste, 
eapable  of  profitable  cultivation,  and  that  the  acre  would 
be  worth,  to  landlord  and  tenant,  £3,  we  would  have,  by 
the  improvement,  a  clear  national  profit  of  £12,000,000, 
or  nearly  double  our  present  taxation,  and  treble  what  it 
was  thirty  years  ago  ! 

In  reference  to  this  Devon  Commission,  and,  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  it,  the  “  Waste  Land  Improvement  Society,” 
Mr.  Mill  writes  as  follows  : — 

“  The  remarkable  success  of  the  Waste  Land  Improve¬ 
ment  Society,  which  proceeded  on  a  plan  far  more 
advantageous  to  the  tenant,  is  an  instance  of  what  an 
Irish  peasantry  can  be  stimulated  to  do  by  a  sufficient 
assurance  that  what  they  do  will  be  for  their  own  advan¬ 
tage.  It  is  not  even  indispensable  to  adopt  perpetuity 
as  the  rule ;  long  leases  at  moderate  rents,  like  those  of 
the  Waste  Land  Society,  would  suffice,  if  a  prospect 
were  held  out  to  the  farmers  of  being  allowed  to  purchase 
their  farms  with  the  capital  which  they  might  acquire, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


o  r*  x 

Ol  O 

as  the  society’s  tenants  were  so  rapidly  acquiring  under 
the  influence  of  its  beneficent  system.”* 

Precisely — “at  moderate  rents”  But  leases,  short  or 
long,  at  rack-rents,  such  as  those  put  on  the  tenants  of 
the  Port  Royal  estate,  are  an  affair  of  quite  a  different 
complexion. 

Appended  to  the  above  passage  is  the  following 
interesting  note  : — 

44  Though  this  society,  during  the  years  succeeding  the 
famine,  was  forced  to  wind  up  its  affairs,  the  memory  of 
what  it  accomplished  ought  to  be  preserved.  The  follow¬ 
ing  is  an  extract  in  the  proceedings  of  Lord  Devon’s 
Commission, f  from  the  report  made  to  the  society  in 
1845,  by  their  intelligent  manager,  Colonel  Robinson  : — 

44  4  Two  hundred  and  forty-five  tenants,  many  of  whom 
were,  a  few  years  ago,  in  a  state  bordering  on  pauperism, 
the  occupiers  of  small  holdings  of  from  ten  to  twenty 
plantation  acres  each,  have,  by  their  own  free  labor, 
with  the  society’s  aid,  improved  their  farms  to  the  value 
of  £4,396 — £605  having  been  added  during  the  last 
year,  being  at  the  rate  of  £17  18s.  per  tenant  for  the 
whole  term,  and  £2  9s.  for  the  past  year ;  the  benefit  of 
which  improvement  each  tenant  will  enjoy  during  the 
term  of  a  thirty-one  years’  lease. 

44  4  These  245  tenants  and  their  families  have,  by  spade 
industry,  reclaimed  and  brought  under  cultivation  1,032 
acres  of  land,  previously  unproductive  mountain  waste, 
upon  which  they  grew  last  year  crops  valued  by  com¬ 
petent  practical  persons  at  £3,89  6;  being  in  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  £15  18s.  to  each  tenant;  and  their  live  stock, 
consisting  of  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  and  pigs,  now  actually 
upon  the  estate,  is  valued,  according  to  the  present  prices 
of  the  neighboring  markets,  at  £4,162,  of  which  £1,304 


*  “  Polit.  Econ.,”  b.  ii.,  c.  10 


t  P.  84. 


376 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


has  been  added  since  February,  1844,  being  at  the  rate 
of  £16  19s.  for  the  whole  period,  and  £5  6s.  for  the  last 
year,  during  which  time  their  stock  has  increased  in 
value  a  sum  equal  to  their  present  annual  rent ;  and  by 
the  statistical  tables  and  returns  referred  to  in  previous 
reports,  the  tenants,  in  general,  improve  their  little 
farms,  and  increase  their  cultivation  in  nearly  direct 
proportion  to  the  number  of  available  working  persons 
of  both  sexes  of  which  their  families  consist.’ 

“  Their  cannot  be  a  stronger  testimony  to  the  superior 
amount  of  gross  and  even  of  net  produce,  raised  by 
small  farming  under  any  tolerable  system  of  landed 
tenure  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  attention  that  the  industry 
and  zeal  were  greatest  among ,  the  smaller  holders ; 
Colonel  Kobinson  noticing,  as  exceptions  to  the  remark¬ 
able  and  rapid  progress  of  improvement,  some  tenants 
who  were  occupants  of  larger  farms  than  twenty  acres — a 
class  too  often  deficient  in  the  enduring  industry  in¬ 
dispensable  for  the  successful  prosecution  of  mountain 
improvements.”* 

Here,  surely,  are  facts  wTell  worthy  the  attention  of 
British  statesmen.  They  say  we  are  “  surplus  ”  by 
millions,  while  we  really  require  millions  more  to  bring 
our  million  waste  acres  into  a  state  of  cultivation,  and  thus 
add  to  the  strength,  the  wealth,  the  peace,  the  happiness 
of  the  kingdom. 

“What  ought  to  be  done,  said  the  Poor  Law  In¬ 
quiry  Commissioners  of  1837,  “  we  trust  will  be  done. 
The  improvement  of  Ireland  is  of  the  deepest  impor¬ 
tance  to  every  part  of  the  United  Kingdom.  At  present, 
with  a  population  nearly  equal  to  the  half  of  Great 
Britain,  she  yields  only  about  a  twelfth  of  the  revenue 
7  At  present,  with  a  population  of  only  about  one-sixth,  she 


*  “Polit.  Econ.,”  Hid. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


377 


is  made  to  yield  the  same  proportion) ;  nor  can  she  yield 
more  till  more  she  has  to  yield.  Increased  means  must 
precede  increased  contributions ;  and  to  supply  Ireland 
with  these  is  the  great  object  of  our  consideration.  We 
anxiously  hope  that  they  may  conduce  to  it,  and  that 
Ireland  may  at  length  become  what  Sir  William  Temple 
declared  long  ago,  what  by  wise  and  judicious  govern¬ 
ment  it  would  become,  the  right  arm  of  the  empire.’ ’ 

Instead  of  being  which,  however,  she  is  the  “difficulty” 
and  the  “  danger”  of  that  same  empire — all  by  unwise  ancl 
injudicious  “  government.” 

Mr.  Kay  complains  as  follows  of  the  extent  of  waste, 
yet  reclaimable,  land  throughout  the  country : — 

“  Nearly  one-third  of  this  rich  island  is  wholly  un¬ 
cultivated,  and  is  nothing  more  than  bogs,  moors,  and 
waste  lands ;  the  cultivation  of  the  remaining  part  is 
generally  of  the  most  miserable  kind.  Most  of  the  great 
proprietors  have  no  spare  capital  to  invest  in  the  improve¬ 
ment  of  their  estates,  or  in  bringing  any  of  their  waste 
lands  under  cultivation.  Few  even  of  those  who  have 
capital  are  energetic  or  intelligent  enough  to  expend  it 
in  so  rational  a  manner.  Many,  if  not  most,  of  the  resi¬ 
dent  landlords  in  the  south  and  west  of  Ireland,  are  a 
jovial,  careless,  hunting  set  of  squires,  who  think  and 
care  ten  times  more  about  their  sports  than  about  their 
lands  or  tenants,  while  the  farmers  and  under-lessees  of 
the  farmers  will  not  invest  capital  in  the  cultivation  of 
their  lands,  or  in  reclaiming  their  bogs,  because  they  have 

no  leases  and  no  security  for  their  outlay . Nor  is 

civilization  in  Ireland  merely  stationary.  It  is  actually 
going  backwards.  In  the  last  few  years,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  acres  have  been  thrown  out  of  cultivation, 
owing,  ....  on  the  part  of  the  farmers,  to  want  of  se¬ 
curity,  and  to  being  prevented  purchasing  any  part  of  the 
strictly  entailed  estates.”* 


*  Ibid,  p.  305. 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


O  rr  Q 

o7o 

True,  the  latter  cause  no  longer  subsists  ;  but,  un¬ 
happily,  since  its  removal,  first  by  the  Incumbered,  and 
next  by  the  Landed  Estates  Court,  matters  have  become 
worse,  by  the  grasping  of  the  class  of  purchasers  who,  as 
a  rule,  have  come  in,  and  whose  one  idea  is  to  recover 
the  principal,  by  “  exorbitant  rents,”  in  the  shortest  pos¬ 
sible  number  of  years. 

Mr.  Lynch,  late  Master  in  Chancery,  speaking  of  a 
merely  “  permissive  measure,”  drafted  by  himself  for  the 
reclamation  of  the  waste  land,  says  :  “  But  if,  after  a  few 
years,  these  wastes  are  not  reclaimed,  then  I  do  think 
the  legislature  would  be  justified  in  passing  a  compulsory 
law.  The  owners  of  these  lands  cannot  be  allowed  to  say : 
‘  We  shall  not  improve  these  lands,  neither  shall  we 
avail  ourselves  of  the  legislative  facilities  that  are 
afforded  us  ;  our  lands  shall  be  idle  and  unproductive.’ 
Such  a  course  would  be  a  breach  of  the  social  compact, 
and  as  it  would  be  materially  detrimental  to  our 
material  interests,  we  cannot  suppose  it  will  be  pur¬ 
sued.”* 

Yet  it  is  pursued,  and,  detrimental  as  it  is  to  every 
interest,  even  that  of  the  landlords  themselves,  I  fear 
their  “  dog-in-the-manger-ism  ”  will  continue  to  pursue  it 
until  the  dog  be  muzzled  or  otherwise  put  from  doing 
mischief  for  mischief’s  sake. 

Thornton,  writing  before  the  ebb-tide  of  emigration 
had  begun,  and  suggesting  a  means  of  employing  the 
starving  population,  says:  “Emigration  cannot  dispose 
of  such  multitudes,  nor  can  they  betake  themselves  to 
the  sedentary  occupations  of  towns.  The  employment 
afforded  them  must  be  agricultural,  and  must  be  procured 
in  Ireland,  yet  not  on  the  land  already  under  cultivation. 
Where,  then,  can  they  be  provided  for  'l  The  question 


*  “Measures  for  Ireland,”  p.  57. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


379 


admits  of  but  one  answer.  They  must  be  transferred 
to  the  waste  lands.”  * 

But,  in  the  language  of  Mill,  “  since  these  words  were 
written,  events  unforeseen  by  anyone  have  saved  the 
English  rulers  of  Ireland  from  the  embarrassments  which 
would  have  been  the  just  penalty  of  their  indifference 
and  want  of  foresight.  ...  To  the  owners  of  the  rent  it 
may  be  very  convenient  that  the  bulk  of  the  inhabitants, 
despairing  of  justice  in  the  country  where  they  and  their 
ancestors  have  lived  and  suffered,  should  seek  on  another 
continent  that  property  in  land  which  is  denied  to  them 
at  home.  But,”  he  adds,  “  the  legislature  ought  to 
view  with  other  eyes  the  forced  expatriation  of  millions 
of  the  people.  When  the  inhabitants  of  a  country  quit 
the  country  en  masse,  because  the  government  will  not 
make  it  a  place  fit  for  them  to  live  in,  the  government  is 
judged  and  condemned.”! 

*  “Plea,”  p.  216.  f  Mill,  b.  ii.  c.  x. 


380 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


\ 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  REMEDY. 

My  task  is  nearly  over.  I  undertook  to  sketch  the 
monster  of  Irish  landlordism,  since  the  time  when  it  as¬ 
sumed  a  definite  form,  in  something  like  its  actual  shape. 
The  picture,  it  must  he  admitted,  is  repulsive  enough ; 
hut  yet  not  the  less  instructive  to  contemplate.  And  the 
instruction  which  its  study  may  convey  is  only  enhanced 
hy  its  contrast  with  the  landlordism  of  almost  the  whole 
glohe  besides  ;  the  exceptions,  as  we  have  seen,  being 
pretty  perfect  parallels  to  itself  in  hideousness  of  aspect 
and  destructive  operation.  “To  tell  the  truth,”  says 
Pliny,  “large  farms  have  ruined  Italy.”  And  from 
Rous  to  Latimer — from  Henry  IY.  to  .Charles  II.,  the 
Catholic  monk  and  king,  the  Protestant  prelate  and 
monarch,  the  Catholic  and  Protestant  legislature  alike, 
with  Protestant  and  Catholic  royal  commissions,  con¬ 
tinued  to  make  the  same  complaint  of  the  same  evil  in 
England.  We  have  abundantly  seen  how  loudly  it  has 
been  bewailed  by  so  many  impartial  witnesses,  English, 
French,  German,  Irish,  Protestant,  and  Catholic,  in  Ire¬ 
land.  The  crisis  has  now  arrived ;  and  every  one  asks — 
“What  is  to  be  done!” 

Well,  in  my  opinion,  if  the  deep-seated  and  long-rooted 
evil  is  to  be  remedied  at  all  by  legislation  (about  which 
I  entertain  grave  doubts),  the  remedy  must  be  final  and 
complete.  It  must  be  applied  not  merely  in  view  of 
actual  facts,  not  merely  with  the  view  of  doing  absolute 
justice  as  matters  just  stand  between  landlord  and 
tenant,  but,  further,  with  the  history  of  Irish  landlord- 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


381' 


ism  open  before  the  statesman’s  eyes,  and  with  a  view 
of  repairing,  at  least  to  some  extent,  the  crying  wrongs 
of  past  generations  and  ages.  If  a  robber  seizes  my  pro¬ 
perty,  the  law  is  not  content  with  so  dealing  with  him  as 
to  prevent  his  further  depredations ;  it  moreover  compels 
him  to  restore  the  ill-gotten  goods,  and  thus,  as  far  as 
possible,  place  the  injured  owner  in  the  position  he 
would  occupy  had  not  the  thief  plied  his  trade.  Now 
this  restitution  cannot  be  effected  in  a  direct  form  or  in 
a  pecuniary  shape.  The  beggared  children  of  robbed  and 
plundered  sires — robbed  and  plundered  many  of  them¬ 
selves,  too — cannot,  by  direct  compensation,  be  placed  in 
the  position  they  certainly  would  occupy  had  not  their 
parents  been  hitherto  plundered  according  to  law.  How, 
then,  may  this  reasonable  restitution  be  effected  ?  Simply 
by  so  framing  the  law  as  to  enable  the  tenant  to  emerge, 
in  the  shortest  possible  time,  from  the  poverty  and  de¬ 
gradation  in  which  iniquitous  land  laws  had  placed  him¬ 
self  and  his  forefathers.  And  how  may  this  be  effected? 

1st.  By  giving  him  absolute  security,  in  the  shape  of 
PERMANENT  TENURE  of  llis  land. 

2nd.  By  confining  the  landlord’s  rent  to  the  tenement 
or  other  official  valuation. 

3rd.  By  putting  a  certain  limit  to  latifundism,  as  done 
five  hundred  years  before  Christ  in  Rome,  and  three 
hundred  years  ago  in  England. 

The  first  without  the  second  is  simply  an  illusion. 
It  is  merely  a  tenure-at-will  under  a  fulsome  name.  For 
if  the  “owner”  is  left  at  liberty  to  “raise  his  rents”  at 
will,  he  has  the  tenant  as  completely  at  his  mercy  as  the 
serf  is  at  this  moment.  If,  on  the  expiration  of  a  lease? 
the  landlord  can  say  to  his  tenant,  “  You  must  give  me 
£1  or  10s.  an  acre  more  for  this  land  ;  and  if  the  land  be 
really  not  worth  this,  the  tenant  is  as  effectually  evicted 
as  if  the  habere  were  in  the  sheriff  s  hands.  He  tries  to 


382 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


pay  an  impossible  rent ;  tlie  effort  makes  him  bankrupt, 
and  then  he  has  to  “  quit,”  owing  to  non-payment  of 
rent.  Or  if,  by  his  industry  and  capital,  he  had  succeeded 
in  vastly  improving  the  land  to  the  value  demanded,  the 
landlord  has  only  to  pitch  once  a  figure  still  higher, 
which  no  capital  or  industry  could  meet,  and  thus  obtain 
for  himself  possession  of  the  coveted  farm.  But  it  will 
be  said :  “  The  new  land  measure  will  contain  provisions 
for  1  compensation/  and  few  landlords  will  be  found 
ready  to  pay  down  sums  of  money  themselves  in  shape 
of  tenant-right  to  their  tenants  on  the  expiration  of  the 
lease.” 

To  which  I  reply,  that  were  only  one  landlord  in  a 
hundred  thus  disposed,  as  long  as  ■such  a  power  is  left  in 
the  hands  of  the  landlord  class,  there  is  a  radical  defect 
in  the  bill  proposed.  Granted,  but  not  admitted,  that 
the  cases  may  be  few,  still  the  very  fact  of  their  possi¬ 
bility  in  any  case,  their  probability  in  several,  and  their 
certainty  even  in  a  few  instances,  is  a  blot  that  cannot 
be  effaced.  No  tenant  can  be  secure.  No  tenant  can 
say  with  that  certainty  which  is  essential  to  successful 
industry,  “  I  am  now  working  for,  not  alone  my  own 
children,  but  for  my  children’s  children  to  the  last 
generation.”  And  unless  the  Irish  tenant  is  enabled  to 
sa j  and  to  feel  this,  without  any  doubt  or  misgiving,  not 
alone  is  he  not  in  anywise  “  compensated  ”  for  past 
hideous  wrong,  but  inequitably  and  unequally  dealt  with 
apart  from  that  essential  consideration.  Landlords,  too, 
will  still  be  found  to  evict,  and  tenants  be  driven  to  retal¬ 
iate  ;  coercion  bills,  of  divers  names,  will  continue  to  be 
passed  in  indecent  haste ;  special  commissions  will  con¬ 
tinue  to  speed ;  and  the  last  state  of  Ireland,  only  half 
exorcised  of  the  spirit  of  old  landlordism,  will  be  wwse 
than  the  first.  The  spirit  of  independence  and  self- 
respect  will  be  developed  by  the  advance  of  enlighten- 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


383 


ment ;  and  what  the  wretched  serf,  who  hitherto  hardly 
knew  his  rights,  so  ground  had  he  been  under  the  iron 
hoof  of  territorial  despotism,  had  endured  with  a  patience 
astonishing  to  strangers,  he  will  no  longer  brook,  but,  in 
the  words  of  the  Dublin  Review,  already  quoted,  “  seek 
that  protection  from  himself  which  was  denied  him 
elsewhere.” 

The  landlord,  therefore,  must  be  denied  the  cherished 
traditional  power  of  raising  his  rents  ad  libitum. 

The  following  are  among  the  most  recent  cases,  which 
I  take  from  the  Waterford  News  of  Nov.  12,  1869: — 

A  “  MODEL  FARMER  ”  AND  HIS  LANDLORD. 

The  public  have  often  heard  of  the  case  of  Mr.  William 
Joyce,  of  Abbey  Farm,  near  this  city,  and  his  landlord. 
They  have  often  heard  of  all  the  “  allowances  ”  and 
“  abatements  ”  and  other  good  things  which  Mr.  Joyce 
received  in  consideration  of  his  improvements.  These 
statements,  it  now  appears,  were  all  delusions,  as  shown 
by  Mr.  Joyce’s  own  unvarnished  tale.  We  have  seen  his 
receipts  from  the  beginning  to  the  present  time.  We 
are  glad  to  find  that*  Mr.  Joyce  is,  financially,  an  inde¬ 
pendent  man ;  but  if  he  were  otherwise,  and  obliged  to 
emigrate,  or  go  to  the  poor-house,  the  result  would  be 
the  same.  The  hard  case  of  this  respectable  and  indus¬ 
trious  Englishman  must  be  heard  in  the  British  parlia¬ 
ment  : — 

“  To  the  Editor  of  the  1  Waterford  News.' 

“  Sir — I  am  an  Englishman,  and  came  over  to  this 
country  in  1852,  when  I  took  the  farm  I  now  hold  from 
the  late  Mr.  Congreve,  of  Mount  Congreve,  at  a  rent  of 
£2  per  acre,  for  a  term  of  twenty-one  years.  At  that 
time  it  was  in  a  most  wretched  state,  like  the  greater  part 


384 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


of  tlie  lands  of  this  country  just  after  the  famine  years. 
The  farm  had  been  previously  let  to  four  or  five  small 
tenants,  who  took  all  they  could  from  it,  and  left  it  to 
the  landlord.  So  you  may  easily  imagine  what  state  I 
found  it  in,  without  a  dwelling-house  or  out-offices  of  any 
kind,  except  one  or  two  old  places  tumbling  down. 

“  Now,  sir,  I  must  tell  you  what  I  have  done.  I  built 
a  nice  dwelling-house,  and  as  complete  a  set  of  offices  as 
any  in  the  country  ;  I  drained  all  the  land,  levelled  fences, 
squared  the  fields,  and  made  it  what  it  is  now  called,  the 
‘  model  farm,’  and  for  which  I  took  the  prizes  given  by 
the  Waterford  Farming  Society  for  eight  years  in  succes¬ 
sion. 

“  When  I  had  eight  years  of  my  lease  to  run,  I  thought 
proper  to  apply  to  my  present  landlord,  Ambrose  Con¬ 
greve,  Esq.,  of  Mount  Congreve,  into  whose  hands  it  fell 
on  the  death  of  his  father.  You  will  see  by  the  letters 
which  I  enclose  what  I  am  to  expect,  and  how  I  am  to  be 
treated,  at  the  expiration  of  my  lease.  After  spending 
my  own  money,  £1,600,  in  permanent  improvements, 
I  am  now  quietly  asked  to  give  £1,200  out  of  my  pocket, 
and  a  rise  of  rent  of  30s.  per  acre,  to  get  a  twenty-three 
years’  lease. 

“  You  will  see  by  the  agent’s  letter  that  upon  no  other 
terms  am  I  to  hold  the  farm  after  my  present  lease 
expires.  You  will  have  my  answer  to  his  letter.  If  I 
consented  to  take  a  lease  for  thirty-one  years,  I  would 
have  to  pay  30s.  per  acre  extra  for  the  eight  years  of  my 
lease  unexpired,  which  would  amount  to  £1,200,  and  the 
additional  30s.  per  acre  for  the  remaining  twenty-three 
years.  You  must  recollect  that  I  have  already  expended 
£1,600  in  permanent  improvements  in  the  fourteen  years 
I  have  had  the  farm,  and  I  am  now  called  upon  to  pay 
for  those  improvements  at  the  rate  of  30s.  per  acre.  I 
ask  you  is  this  justice  to  an  improving  tenant  1 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


385 


“  I  do  not  fear  my  landlord,  as  I  am  quite  independent 
of  him ;  therefore  you  have  my  authority  to  use  my  name 
in  this  matter  just  as  you  think  proper,  for  the  benefit  of 
tenant  farmers. 

“William  Joyce” 


CORRESPONDENCE  BETWEEN  LANDLORD  AND  TENANT. 

“Abbey Farm,  Waterford,  March  1,  1866. 

“Kespected  Sir, — When  you  were  here  the  other 
day,  I  did  not  quite  understand  you  with  respect  to 
granting  me  a  renewal  of  my  lease  for  thirty-one  years. 
I  think  you  said  you  would  not  do  so  unless  I  gave 
£3  10s.  per  acre.  Am  I  to  understand  that  rent  is  to 
commence  from  the  present  Lady  Day,  1866,  or  from 
and  after  the  expiration  of  my  present  lease  1  Please 
inform  me  on  that  point,  and  I  will  give  you  a  decided 
answer  in  a  day  or  two.  I  am,  respected  sir,  your 
obedient  servant, 

“William  Joyce. 

“  To  Ambrose  Congreve,  Esq., 

Mount  Congreve. 

“  N.B. — Please  take  into  consideration  what  the  farm 
was  when  I  first  took  it,  what  it  is  now,  and  that  I  have 
expended  nearly  £1,600  in  permanent  improvements,  and 
I  never  allowed  a  shilling  to  be  overdue  for  rent.” 

“  Mount  Congreve,  March  3,  1866. 

“  Dear  Sir, — Mr.  Congreve  desires  me  to  say,  in 
answer  to  your  letter  received  this  day,  that  he  thought  he 
had  made  himself  sufficiently  explicit  as  to  the  terms  on 
which  he  was  willing  to  accede  to  your  request  of  his 
granting  an  extension  of  the  present  lease,  which  were 
these : — That  he  is  willing  to  cancel  your  present  lease, 
and  to  grant  you  a  new  one  from  the  25th  March,  1866, 

2  B 


386 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


at  £3  10s.  per  acre,  said  rent  to  commence  from  said 
25th  March.  Under  no  other  terms  will  he  either  give 
an  extension  or  renewal  of  the  lease. 

“  I  am,  dear  sir,  yours  truly, 

“John  T.  Medlycott. 

“  To  Mr.  Wm,  Joyce,  Abbey  Farm.” 

“Abbey  Farm,  March  5,  1866. 

“  Dear  Sir, — In  answer  to  your  letter  of  the  2nd,  I 
beg  to  say  that  I  must  decline  a  renewal  of  my  lease 
under  the  terms  you  propose,  as  I  prefer  my  lease  to  run 
out.  I  am,  dear  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

“William  Joyce. 

“  To  J.  T.  Medlycott,  Esq.,  .  . 

Mount  Congreve. 

“  P.S.— Should  Mr.  Congreve  wish  to  get  possession  of 
my  farm  before  the  expiration  of  my  lease,  I  will  sell 
him  my  interest  at  once,  and  give  him  possession  at  Lady 
Day  next,  if  we  can  come  to  terms.  The  farm  is  now  in 
the  highest  state  of  cultivation,  and  everything  connected 
with  it  in  the  best  working  order.  Should  he  buy  me 
out,  the  money  may  remain  in  his  hands  at  5  per  cent, 
for  a  few  years,  if  that  would  be  any  accommodation.” 

Comment  on  such  landlordism  is  superfluous,  though 
several  journals  have  already  commented  on  it  in  terms 
which  it  well  deserves. 

The  following  statement  I  take  from  the  same  autho¬ 
rity  : — 

“  Tipperary  bears  a  bloody  reputation  for  its  dealings 
with  landlords.  More  agrarian  crimes  have  been  com¬ 
mitted  within  its  borders  than  that  of  any  other  county 
in  Ireland ;  and  if  such  fact  can  be  accounted  for  in  any 
way,  it  may  be  in  the  truth  that  there  is  more  provoca¬ 
tion,  perhaps,  than  in  any  other  quarter  of  Ireland. 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


387 


Tipperary  is  rich  in  its  land,  and  highly  productive  in 
its  agricultural  resources ;  hut,  strange  as  it  may  appear, 
it  has  landlords  unequalled  in  their  harsh  and  exacting 
proclivities.  The  Bally cohy  tenants  and  their  landlord 
Scully  will  not  fade  from  the  memory  during  the  present 
generation ;  and  now  we  have  before  us  Mr.  John 
Langley,  of  Lickfin,  one  of  her  majesty’s  justices  of  the 
peace  for  the  same  county,  whose  dealings  with  his 
tenants  are  recorded  in  the  report  which  we  gave  last 
week  of  his  proceedings  for  ejectments,  heard  at  Clonmel 
quarter  sessions.  In  the  court,  Mr.  Langley  admitted 
that  he  had  increased  the  rent  70  per  cent.,  that  all  was- 
punctually  paid,  even  up  to  the  present  November,  in 
one  case  at  least — that  the  tenants  were  all  good  and 
honest  men — but  “  he  wanted  the  land,”  and  come  what 
might — hunger,  thirst,  privation,  and  exposure  even 
unto  death — he  should  have  possession.  Mr.  Langley 
added  that  he  is  a  most  “  popular  man”  in  the  county, 
beloved  by  all  classes ;  and  those  who  may  read  of  the 
actions  of  which  he  is  the  prime  mover,  will  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  is  easy  indeed  to  win  the  esteem, 
affection,  and  popularity  of  the  people  of  Tipperary,  and 
must  naturally  conclude  that  all  those  whose  bodies 
have  been,  from  time  to  time,  pierced  with  bullets  or 
mowed  down  by  other  deadly  weapons,  must  have  been 
demons  of  the  fiercest  form,  if  Mr.  Langley  be  considered 
the  angel  he  paints  himself. 

“The  first  action  in  which  he  was  plaintiff  on  the  pre¬ 
sent  occasion  was  against  a  farmer,  named  William  Fitz¬ 
gerald,  whose  family,  for  three  generations  at  least,  had 
held  the  six  and  a-half  acres  from  which  he  was  now 
about  to  be  expelled,  for  no  cause  but  that  Mr.  Langley 
“  wanted  the  land.”  On  a  certain  agreement,  there  had 
been  a  lav/suit  eight  years  ago,  when  a  decree  was 
obtained  against  Fitzgerald,  and  his  rent  was  then  raised 


388 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


from  £10  to  £17  a-year,  which,  with  £1  per  annum 
to  “Mr.  Langley’s  brother”  for  his  influence  in  obtaining 
a  renewal  of  his  yearly  lease,  made  an  increase  of  seventy 
per  cent,  in  Fitzgerald’s  rent.  Nevertheless,  this  rent 
was  punctually  paid ;  but,  though  Langley  admitted  that 
all  was  settled  up  to  the  present,  and  that  Fitzgerald  is 
an  “  honest  man,”  he  must  go  by  the  road-side  to  perish, 
or,  if  he  be  able,  cross  the  Atlantic,  to  find  a  home  on 
land  in  which  all  men  have  an  equal  claim  and  equal 
protection. 

“  The  next  case  on  the  list  is  that  of  John  Nagle,  who 
held  sixteen  acres.  The  defendant  produced  a  receipt  in 
court  for  his  rent  paid  up  to  May  last.  He  stated  his 
father  became  tenant  on  the  lands  in  1820,  and  got  a 
lease  for  his  (defendant’s)  brother’s  life,  which  expired 
in  May,  1865 ;  the  rent  up  to  that  time  had  been  only 
£13  per  year,  but  immediately  that  the  lease  expired, 
an  ejectment  was  served  in  the  superior  courts,  for  which 
the  defendant  had  to  pay  £3  15s.,  the  cost  of  the  eject¬ 
ment,  and  to  submit  to  an  increase  of  £7  8s.  per  annum 
in  his  rent.  He  was  also  compelled  to  take  out  a  lease 
for  a  year  certain,  and  to  give  plaintiff’s  brother  £1  5s.  each 
year  for  having  the  document  renewed  and  drawn  up.  The 
plaintiff  admitted  that  Nagle  had  ever  paid  his  rent 
punctually,  but  he  wanted  the  land  and  should  have  it. 

“  There  was  still  another  case,  in  which  a  man  named 
James  Boney  was  the  victim.  Boney  had  formerly  held 
land,  but  being  less  fortunate  than  his  unfortunate  neigh¬ 
bors,  had  been  long  since  ejected  by  Mr.  Langley.  The 
landlord,  in  a  moment  of  compassion  or  compunction,  let 
Boney  have  possession  of  a  roofless  house,  with  a  promise 
to  give  him  timber  and  slates  to  roof  it  if  he  did  the  re¬ 
maining  work  himself.  The  house  is  now  roofed  and 
covered.  Mr.  Langley  was  offered  by  Boney  the  amount 
of  rent  due  and  the  cost  of  the  ejectment — but  no  ;  he 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


389 


\  .  * 

“  wanted  the  house  and  should  have  it,”  and  so  he  has 
got  it.  To  Boney  he  would  not  give  even  a  yearly 
tenancy,  for  then  he  could  not  eject  him  without  a  six 
months’  notice,  and  the  law  was,  unfortunately  for  Mr. 
Langley’s  brother,  so  crooked  here,  that  he  was  deprived 
of  his  fee  for  making  out  a  lease,  as  he  did  in  the  other 
cases,  “  for  one  year  certain,”  as  the  process  of  ejectment 
would  be  thereby  too  slow ;  on  the  contrary,  the  chair¬ 
man,  who  had  been  reluctantly  compelled  to  put  the  law 
in  force  in  the  other  cases  in  the  landlord’s  favor,  now 
decreed  that  Boney  should  be  allowed  three  pounds  for 
his  labor  in  roofing  the  house.  But  the  law  has  taken 
its  course — Fitzgerald,  Nagle,  and  Boney,  and  their 
families,  are  homeless  wanderers  on  the  world,  and  Lang¬ 
ley  has  had  his  pound  of  flesh  ;  he  wanted  the  farms 
which  three  generations  had  done  without,  and  the  one¬ 
sided  law  gave  them  to  him. 

“Now,  any  one  who  reads  those  cases  and  studies  them, 
will  see  at  once  that  when  those  lands  were  taken,  three 
generations  ago,  it  is  not  likely  that  the  owners  of  them 
were  more  generous  than  the  same  class  of  men  are  at 
the  present  day,  and  it  is  as  certain  as  most  things  in 
the  world  that  they  were  then  let  for  their  full  value. 
When,  however,  a  new  Langley  comes  to  the  surface,  and 
by  the  force  of  ejectment  notices,  served  with  his  own 
hands,  with  armed  policemen  illegally  in  the  distance 
ready  to  aid  him,  if  necessary,  is  able  to  add  ten  per  cent, 
to  the  rents,  and  finds  the  tenants  ready  and  willing  to 
pay,  sooner  than  sacrifice  their  only  means  of  livelihood, 
if  is  clear  that  the  labor  and  the  capital  of  the  Nagles 
and  the  Fitzgeralds  have  added  to  the  land  that  increased 
value,  and  that  those  who  are  now  evicted  are  being 
robbed  of  that  amount. 

“  The  cases  are  striking  examples  of  what  that  able  and 
accomplished  statesman,  Lord  Clarendon,  her  majesty’s 


390 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  has  so  appropriately  desig¬ 
nated  ‘  felonious  landlordism  /  but  to  remedy  the  laws 
under  which  such  atrocities  are  committed,  Mr.  Nap.  B. 
Wyse,  a  great  local  luminary,  designates  as  ‘  revolu¬ 
tionary’ and  ‘  socialistic.’” 

And  these  are  only  sample  cases. 

As  to  the  third  provision,  it  would  be  idle  to  enlarge 
on  the  evils  of  unlimited  pasturage  and  arbitrary  rents. 
Enough  has  been  already  said  and  quoted  to  show  that 
this  ever  has  been  the  bane  of  such  countries  as  per¬ 
mitted  them  to  take  root.  There,  therefore,  should  be  a 
legal  limit  to  their  extent. 

4th.  As  a  corrective  both  to  those  and  the  general 
evil  of  latifundism,  every  farmer  should  be  compelled  to 
till  two-tliirds  or  three-fourths  of  his  profitable  land. 
That  most  interesting  class  of  the  community,  the  rural 
laborers,  would  thus  be  sure  of  employment,  and  raised 
from  their  present  depressed  and  pitiable  condition.  The 
country,  too,  would  become  proportionately  richer,  as  the 
produce  of  an  acre  of  well-tilled  land  is  worth  so  *much 
more  in  the  shape  of  wholesome,  nutritious  food  than 
that  of  an  acre  of  grass.  No  doubt  this  will  not  suit  the 
ideas  of  the  great  lords  and  rich  merchant  princes  of  Eng¬ 
land.  But  if  the  issue  is  to  be  between  Irish  and  Ens:- 
lish  interests,  then  the  sooner  Ireland  looks  out  for 
herself  the  better  for  her — perhaps  for  both. 

5th.  The  matter,  too,  of  the  waste  lands  must,  clearly, 
be  taken  into  account.  If  landlords  themselves  will  not 
reclaim  these  wastes,  let  the  wastes  be  handed  over  to 
those  who  will  make  them  contribute  to  the  general 
wealth  of  the  country  and  the  happiness  of  the  people. 
Details  on  this  particular  subject  need  not  be  very 
lengthy.  Let  a  commission  be  issued  to  pronounce  upon 
every  perch  of  reclaimable  land ;  and  let  the  proprietor 
be  obliged  by  law  to  hand  that  over,  on  equitable  terms, 


SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION. 


391 


decided  on  by  such  commission,  to  tenants  who  may 
undertake  the  work  of  reclamation. 

Some  check  must  be  put  to  systematic  absenteeism. 
Let  the  10th  Charles  I.  be  enforced  or  revived,  imposing 
a  tax  of  4s.  in  the  £1  on  the  six  months’  absentee  ;  or, 
better,  let  the  suggestion  of  Swift,  raising  the  fine  to  5s., 
be  carried  into  law,  and  we  shall  soon  have  abundance  of 
capital  of  our  own,  and  hear  no  more  of  the  offence 
phrase  of  “  the  introduction  of  English  capital  into 
Ireland.”  Let  English  legislators  and  their  worthy 
instruments,  Irish  landlords,  only  leave  us  our  own 
capital,  or,  at  least,  a  reasonable  share  of  it,  and  the 
world  shall  soon  see  the  result.  Trade,  commerce,  and 
agriculture  will  revive,  as  from  1782  to  1800 — provided, 
as  then,  the  management  of  Irish  capital,  development 
of  Irish  industries,  the  making  of  Irish  laws,  and  the 
assessing  and  expenditure  of  Irish  taxes,  be  left  in 
Ireland’s  own  hands  here  at  home.  This  question,  how¬ 
ever,  it  is  none  of  my  purpose  to  broach.  My  senti¬ 
ments  on  the  matter  are  long  matured,  my  convictions 
unshaken — that  my  long-misruled  country  never  can  be 
prosperous,  happy,  and  contented,  while  she  continues 
the  degraded  province  of  a  foreign,  dominant,  un¬ 
sympathizing,  and  even  hostile  nation. 

As  regards  minor  details,  touching  mal-industry,  or 
neglect,  or  abuse  of  land,  these  surely  can  be  no  obstacle 
to  final  legislation.  I  have  not  the  slightest  objection 
to  a  provision  that  a  tenant  guilty  of  deteriorating  his 
farm,  in  prospect  of  its  abandonment,  should  such  be 
brought  home  to  him,  should  pay  an  adequate  penalty — 
this,  too,  to  be  decided,  not  by  landlord  or  tenant,  but 
by  an  equitable  and  permanent  tribunal. 

However,  such  cases  must,  of  necessity,  be  of  such  rare 
occurrence,  that  to  legislate  substantially  on  the  hypo¬ 
thesis  of  their  occurrence  would  be  a  most  serious  blunder. 


392 


THE  IRISH  LANDLORD 


Above  all, complexity  and  technicality  must  be  avoided. 
Let  there  be  a  law — if  “  law”  there  is  to  be  at  all — saying 
to  the  Irish  tenant  :  “  Pay  your  valued  rent  to  the  man 
whom  I  allow  to  be  your  landlord,  child  of  ‘  confisca¬ 
tion  ’  though  he  be.  Don't  consolidate,  don’t  spoil  your 
land,  don’t  parcel  it  out  infinitesimally,  and  be  as  free 
and  as  independent  as  the  ruler  of  the  state.  Be  as 
sure  of  your  farm  or  holding,  of  your  house  or  cottage, 
as  the  landlord  of  his  castle  and  estate,  or  the  supreme 
ruler  of  the  commonwealth  is  of  his  sceptre.” 


APPENDIX 


->-<►  » ■»  < 


Mr.  Haverty,  in  his  invaluable  “  History  of  Ireland,” 
quoting  from  0’ Curry,  thus  explains  the  law  of  Tanis- 
try : — 

“There  was  no  invariable  rule  of  succession  in  the  Milesian 
times.  But,  according  to  the  general  tenor  of  our  ancient  accounts, 
the  eldest  son  succeeded  the  father,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  colla¬ 
teral  claimants,  unless  it  happened  that  he  was  disqualified  by 
some  personal  deformity  or  blemish,  or  by  natural  imbecility  or 
crime  ;  or  unless  (as  happened  in  after  ages),  by  parental  testament 
or  mutual  compact,  the  succession  was  made  alternative  in  two  or 
more  families.  The  eldest  son  being  thus  recognized  as  the  pre¬ 
sumptive  heir  and  successor  to  the  dignity,  was  denominated 
Tainaste,  that  is,  minor  or  second,  while  all  the  other  sons,  or 
persons  that  were  eligible  in  case  of  his  failure,  were  called 
Bighdhamhna,  that  is,  king-material,  or  king-makings.  This 
was  the  origin  of  tanaiste,  a  successor,  and  tanaisteach,  suc- 
cessorship.  The  tanaiste  had  a  separate  maintenance  and  estab¬ 
lishment,  as  well  as  distinct  privileges  and  liabilities.  He  was 
inferior  to  the  king  or  chief,  but  above  all  the  other  dignitaries  ” 
— p.  49. 

And  on  the  subject  of  gavelkind  the  learned  historian 
remarks  : — 

“  As  tanistry  regulated  the  transmission  of  titles,  offices,  and 
authority,  so  the  custom  of  gavelkind  (or  gavail-kinne),  another 
of  the  ancient  institutions  of  Ireland,  but  which  was  also  common 
to  the  Britons,  Anglo-Saxous,  Franks,  and  other  primitive  people, 
adjusted  the  partition  and  inheritance  of  landed  property.  By 
gavelkind  the  property  was  divided  equally  between  all  the  sons, 
whether  legitimate  or  otherwise,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  daughters  ; 
but,  in  addition  to  his  own  equal  share  which  the  eldest  son  ob¬ 
tained  in  common  with  his  brothers,  he  rec^ved  the  dwelling  house 
and  other  buildings,  which  would  have  been  retained  by  the  father, 
or  kenfine,  if  the  division  were  made,  as  it  frequently  was,  in  his 


394 


APPENDIX. 


own  lifetime.  The  extra  share  was  given  to  the  eldest  brother,  as 
head  of  the  family,  and  in  consideration  of  certain  liabilities 
■which  he  incurred  for  the  security  of  the  family  in  general.  If 
there  were  no  sons,  the  property  was  divided  equally  among  the 
next  male  heirs  of  the  deceased,  whether  uncles,  brothers, 
nephews,  or  cousins,  but  ‘the  female  line,’  as  in  the  Salic  law, 
was  excluded  from  the  inheritance.  Sometimes  a  repartition  of 
the  whole  land  became  necessary,  owing  to  the  extension  of  some 
of  the  branches,  but  it  does  not  appear  that  any  such  confusion  or 
injustice  resulted  from  the  law,  as  is  represented  by  Sir  John 
Davies,  and  by  other  English  lawyers  who  have  adopted  his 
account  of  it. 

“The  tenure  of  land  in  Ireland  was  essentially  a  tribe  or  family 
right.  In  contradistinction  to  the  Teutonic  or  feudal  system, 
which  vested  the  land  in  a  single  person,  who  was  lord  of  the  soil, 
all  the  members  of  a  tribe  or  family  in  Ireland  had  an  equal  right 
to  their  proportionate  share  ” — lb.  pp.  49,  50. 


MRS.  LAYELLE  AND  THE  LATE  SIR  ROGER  PALMER. 

TO  THE  EDITOR  OP  THE  DUBLIN  EVENING  POST. 

Mount  Partry,  26th  August,  i860. 

Sir— May  I  request  the  publication  of  the  following  correspon¬ 
dence  ?  It  puts  in  a  nutshell  the  power  not  alone  possessed  but 
exercised  by  an  Irish  landlord. 

On  the  12tli  March,  1864,  I  addressed  a  note  to  the  late  Mr. 
Thomas  Ormsby,  J.P.,  of  Knockmore,  County  Mayo,  agent  to  the 
late  Sir  R.  Palmer,  one  of  the  most  extensive  (absentee)  proprie¬ 
tors  of  the  county,  asking  permission,  in  my  mother’s  name,  for 
her  daughter  to  reside  with  her  some  time  after  a  treble  bereave¬ 
ment,  the  death  of  my  father,  brother,  and  sister,  within  the  short 
space  of  six  months.  Mr.  Ormsby’s  letter  of  the  15th  March,  1864, 
is  the  reply.  You  will  please  observe  that  in  that  communication 
he  multiplies  the  aged  widow  into  one  “family,”  and  thus,  accord¬ 
ing  to  “  the  rules  of  the  estate,”  condemns  her  to  live  in  solitude 
to  the  end  of  her  days.  My  sister,  however,  came  to  I’eside  with 
my  mother  for  some  time ;  and  for  this,  as  “  the  rules  of  the  estate 
must  be  carried  out,”  was  the  old  widow  flung  adrift,  her  house 
and  out-offices  built  by  my  father  torn  down,  the  boarding, 
mantel-pieces,  window -frames,  and  sashes  carried  off,  and  her 
very  growing  crops  handed  over  to  a  favorite  of  the  “office,” 
neither  kith  nor  kin  to  her. 

My  mother  has  repeatedly  asked  me  ever  since  to  apply  for 
restitution.  Ultimately  I  consented  on  the  10th  of  this  month  ; 
and  the  reply  is  the  disingenuous  letter  of  Mr.  Norman,  distorting 


APPENDIX. 


3Q5 


the  plain  intent  of  my  request,  and  thus,  by  evading,  refusing  my 
demand  for  j  ustice. 

I  ask  how  can  peace  or  good-will  be  expected  in  Ireland  -while 
landlords  are  permitted  and  empowered  by  law  to  commit  such 
unnatural  deeds  ?  Is  it  consistent  with  the  public  weal  that  power 
so  extensive,  so  arbitrary,  and  irresponsible,  should  be  vested  in 
any  one  man  ?  The  queen  could  not  touch  a  hair  of  my  mother’s 
head,  while  the  latter  was  guiltless  of  crime.  The  landlord  drives 
her  houseless,  homeless,  landless,  on  the  world,  for  obeying  a  law 
of  nature,  and  striving  to  comfort  herself  in  her  terrible  affliction 
by  the  society  of  her  child. 

Bear  in  mind,  too,  that  the  rent  was  paid  up  to  the  hour  that 
the  Notice  to  Quit  expired.  Yet  were  her  very  growing  crops  con- 
tiscated,  being,  by  a  fiction  of  law,  the  “  property  ”  of  the  landlord 
since  the  moment  he  obtained  his  habere. 

“One  such  act,”  says  Mr.  Sadleir,  “suffices  to  make  a  human 
monster  ;  a  multitude  of  them,  a  political  economist.” 

Strange  as  it  may  sound,  I  am  resolved  that  my  mother  must  yet 
have  her  own.  I  remain  your  faithful  servant, 

Patrick  Lavelle. 

The  following  is  Mr.  Ormsby’s  reply,  now  endorsed  by  Mr. 
Norman,  to  my  request  that  my  sister  should  be  permitted,  under 
the  circumstances  of  deep  family  affliction,  to  live  for  some  time 
with  my  mother  : — 

.  i 

“  Knockmore,  Ballyglass,  March  15,  1SG4. 

“  Sir, — In  reply  to  your  letter  of  the  12th,  respecting  the  hold¬ 
ing  which  I  have  laid  out  for  your  mother,  Widow  Mary  Lavelle, 
on  the  townland  of  Mullagh,  I  beg  to  say  that  1  will  not  allow 
two  families  to  reside  on  it.  If  her  daughter  is  not  married  she 
can  live  with  her  till  she  gets  married ,  but  not  afterwards.  The 
rules  of  the  estate  must  be  carried  out.  I  am,  sir,  your  obedient 
servant, 

‘  ‘  Thomas  Ormsby.  ” 

So  that,  even  though  my  sister  had  actually  been  living  unmar¬ 
ried  in  the  house  with  my  mother,  the  moment  she  got  married  she 
would  have  to  leave,  though  my  mother  had  no  other  “  chick  nor 
child  ”  to  keep  her  company. 

You  will  notice  the  words  “laid  out  for  your  mother,”  which 
are  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  land  had  just  been  “  striped,” 
though  the  words  would  adroitly  convey  the  impression  that  she 
had  only  been  a  new  tenant  where  she  had  passed  fifty  years  of 
her  life  and  my  father’s  family  generations.  I  may  also  add  that 
even  in  the  striping  she  was  curtailed,  and  a  portion  of  her  land 
given  to  one  who  had  never  held  land  before.  But  of  this  she  did 
not  complain,  as  she  did  not  depend,  nor  did  my  father,  on  the 
land  alone  for  subsistence.  Still  it  was  as  dear  to  them  as  if  they 
did. 


396 


APPENDIX. 


As  regards  the  jumble  of  pronouns,  “she’s”  and  “her’s,”  and 
“her’s”  and  “she’s,”  Irish  land  agents  can  as  well  afford  to  evict 
the  rules  of  grammar  from  their  epistles  as  tenants  from  land. 

A  long  correspondence  followed  this,  which  I  shall  publish  in 
due  time  ;  but  the  result  was  the  cruel  and  heartless  eviction  per- 
2)etrated  by  Mr.  Ormsby  and  adopted  by  Mr.  Norman. 

The  following  is  my  application  to  the  latter  gentleman  : — 

“  Mount  Partry,  10th  August,  1869. 

“  Sir — At  the  repeated  request  of  my  mother,  Mrs.  (widow) 
Lavelle,  late  of  Mullagh,  I  beg  to  apply  to  you  for  her  land  and 
house,  of  which  she  was  (legally,  perhaps,  but)  most  unjustly  de¬ 
prived  by  your  predecessor.  When  I  inform  you  that  the  cause  of 
her  heartless  eviction  was,  not  non-payment  of  rent,  which  my 
father,  and  grandfather,  and  great,  and  great-greatgrandfather,  ever 
paid  with  punctuality — but  for,  on  being  left  a  lone  widow, 
bringing,  for  a  time,  her  daughter  into  the  house  to  give  her 
comfort — I  hope  you  will  not  deem  the  request  unreasonable. 
She  only  now  asks  back  through,  I  hope,  a  conscientious  channel, 
what  she  was  so  unjustly  deprived  of,  through  what  was  called 
‘the  rules  of  the  estate.’ — I  remain  your  obedient  servant, 

“Patrick  Lavelle. 

“Luke  Norman,  Esq.” 

The  “  conscientious  channel  ”  thus  ingeniously  replies  : — 

“Castlebar,  13th  August,  1869. 

“Sir — I  beg  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  letter  of  the 
10th  inst. ,  and,  in  reply,  beg  to  say  that  I  am  not  prepared  to  evict 
a  tenant  who  has  given  me  no  cause  of  complaint.  I  would  wish 
to  add  that  1  have  every  respect  for  the  late  Mr.  Ormsby’s 
memory. — Your  obedient  servant, 

“Luke  Norman. 

“  Lev.  P.  Lavelle.” 

Here  was  a  clever  shuffle  to  raise  a  side  issue — to  put  on  me 
the  odium  of  asking  for  the  eviction  of  a  tenant,  instead  of 
demanding  restitution  of  my  mother’s  plundered  property.  And 
I  replied  as  follows  : — 

“Mount  Partry,  18th  August,  1869. 

“Sir — I  have  to  repel,  with  a  feeling  akin  to  disgust  and 
indignation,  the  interpretation  you  would  fain  fix  on  my  applica¬ 
tion  of  the  10th  inst.,  as  one  for  the  eviction  of  any  tenant,  with 
or  without  ‘cause  of  complaint.’  My  application  was  couched  in 
the  following  terms: — ‘I  beg  to  apply  to  you  for  her  land  and 
house,  of  which  she  was  (legally,  perhaps,  but)  most  unjustly 
deprived  by  your  predecessor.’  This  application  for  the  restitu¬ 
tion  of  what  was  and  is,  before  the  All- J ust  God,  as  much  her 
property  as  the  estate  is  that  of  Sir  Roger  Palmer,  you,  with  full 
deliberation,  distort  into  an  infamous  request  to  have  the  tenant 


APPENDIX. 


397 


evicted.  Your  predecessor  puts  Lis  Lands  into  nay  poor,  widowed 
motlier’s  pocket,  robs  Ler  of  what — even  for  tLe  sake  of  old 
associations  and  memories — sLe  would  not  give  to  any  man  living 
for  £200  ;  and  you  call  a  demand  for  restitution  a  demand  for 
robbery  in  most  hateful,  though  legal  shape. 

“  This  attempt  to  distort  the  plain  meaning  of  a  plain  and 
reasonable  request,  and  thus  to  change  a  very  plain  issue,  will  not 
succeed ;  and  as  you  adopt  the  act  of  your  predecessor,  whose 
conduct  in  the  business  commands  your  ‘every  respect,’  I  must  only 
(failing  him)  hold  you  responsible. — I  am  your  obedient  servant, 

“  Patrick  Lavelle. 

“P.S. — I  may  add  that  the  little  bit  of  discourtesy  in  your 
refusing  me  the  prefix  which  universal  usage  has  accorded  to 
clergymen  (even  unordained)  of  all  creeds,  is  an  affair  solely  for 
your  own  consideration.  “P.  L.” 

The  little  bit  of  discourtesy  was  the  slightest  part  of  the  entire 
affair,  but  Mr.  Norman  thought  fit  to  reply  to  my  allusion  to 
it  as  follows  : — 

“Castlebar,  21st  August,  1S69. 

“Dear  Sir — I  regret  much  the  unintentional  error  in  my  note 
of  the  13th,  which  you  look  upon  as  discourtesy.  1  would  not 
willingly  be  discourteous  to  anyone,  and  therefore  now  apologize 
for  it. 

“I  fail  to  see  in  my  former  letter  any  distortion  of  plain  facts. 
— Your  obedient  servant, 

“Luke  Norman. 

“  Rev.  P.  Lavelle.” 

To  which  I  readily  replied  ; — 

“  Mount  Partry,  25th  Aug.  1869. 

“  Sir — I  freely  accept  your  apology  for  the  discourtesy  I  inci¬ 
dentally  complained  of,  and  which,  in  your  words,  I  am  ready 
to  admit  was  quite  unintentional  on  your  part. 

“  I  beg  to  remind  you  that  there  is,  or  was,  no  question  at  all 
about  the  ‘  distortion  of  facts.’  The  ‘Facts’  are  still  plain  and 
patent.  The  barbarous  eviction  of  a  lone  widow,  for,  in  compli¬ 
ance  with  the  very  instincts  of  our  common  nature,  seeking  the 
society  of  her  daughter  in  her  hour  of  anguish — the  appropriation 
not  alone  of  her  house  and  offices  (all  built  by  my  father),  but 
even  also  of  her  growing  crops,  though  not  a  single  farthing  of 
rent  wras  due — these  are  the  broad  facts,  which  no  disingenuous¬ 
ness  can  distort.  But  again  you  have  attempted  to  distort  the 
plain  meaning  of  my  words,  and  to  confound  an  application  for 
the  restitution  of  plundered  property — legally  plundered,  if  you 
will,  but  so  much  the  worse  for  the  state  of  the  law  and  society 
— with  a  request  to  commit  similar  plunder  anew. 

“I  now,  sir,  again  repeat  my  demand,  founded  as  it  is  on  right 
and  equity,  that  you  restore  to  my  mother  the  land,  all  of  which 
was  reclaimed  from  the  morass  by  my  father  and  ancestors,  her 
house  and  offices  (built  by  my  father  himself),  the  value  of  her 


398 


APPENDIX. 


crops,  confiscated  according  to  law,  tliongli  her  rent  was  paid  up 
to  the  hour  that  the  ‘  Notice  to  Quit’  expired.  All  this  I  demand 
in  the  name  of  natural  right,  as  opposed  to  legal  wrong ;  I  demand 
it,  not  whining  nor  whimpering,  but  as  confident  in  the  justice  of 
my  claim  as  you  would  be  in  reclaiming  your  purse  at  the  hands 
of  a  footpad,  or  as  Sir  Roger  Palmer  would  be  in  reclaiming  his 
confiscated  estate  at  the  hands  of  the  crown. 

‘  ‘  The  degree  of  lesser  or  greater  does  not  alter  the  inherent 
merits  of  the  act.  The  act  depriving  my  mother  of  her  house  and 
place  was  essentially  unjust  and  unrighteous.  It  should,  there¬ 
fore,  be  repaired ;  and  T,  accordingly,  seek  reparation  at  the  proper 
hands. 

“  The  person  who  got  the  fruits  of  her  and  my  father’s  industry 
does  not  live  at  all  in  the  land.  He  still  retains  his  own  holding, 
out  of  which  I  would  as  soon  think  of  asking  you  to  disturb  him 
as  I  would  of  suggesting  to  you  to  blow  out  his  brains. 

“He  wrongfully  obtained,  and  wrongfully  retains,  my  mother’s 
property,  which  she  rightfully  and  reasonably  reclaims. — I  remain 
your  obedient  servant, 

“Patrick  Layelle. 

“Luke  Norman,  Esq.” 

To  this  letter  I  have  not,  nor  could  I  have  received  an  answer 
up  to  this.  But  I  may  safely  prophesy  the  kind  of  answer,  if  any, 
I  am  to  obtain — it  is  reflected  in  the  previous  epistles. 

Not  content  with  appealing  to  the  late  agent,  I  wrote  the 
following  letter  to  Colonel  Palmer,  who,  I  supposed,  and  suppose, 
represented  his  father,  incapacitated  by  illness  from  attending  to 
business  : — 

“Mount  Partry,  29th  May,  1866. 

“  Sir, — You  may  not  be  aware  that  Mr.  Thomas  Ormsby,  your 
father  Sir  Roger’s  agent,  has  evicted  my  widowed  mother,  torn 
down  her  house,  and  handed  over  her  land  and  crops  to  a  perfect 
stranger  to  her,  solely  because,  on  the  death  of  my  father,  brother, 
and  sister,  she  took  in  a  daughter  of  hers  to  live  with  her.  He 
pretends  that  this  was  taking  the  control  of  the  property  out  of 
his  hands,  and  lm  accordingly  served  her  with  notice  to  quit  in 
May,  ’65.  Before  the  notice  expired  she  sent  away  her  daughter 
rather  than  be  evicted  out  of  her  old  home,  but  that  did  not  save 
her  ;  and  though  the  oldest  or  among  the  oldest  tenants  in  the 
estate — though  my  father’s  family  have  lived  on  these  lands  for 
several  generations — though  at  all  times  most  punctual  in  paying 
the  rent  (it  is  paid  up  to  last  November)— she  has  lived  to  see 
herself  houseless  and  landless  for  the  crime  to  which  I  refer. 

“  Rather  than  adopt  other  proceedings,  my  mother  requests  of 
me  to  appeal  to  you  on  her  behalf  against  the  arbitrary  and 
heartless  act  of  the  agent,  hoping  that  you  will  protect  an  old  and 
respectable  tenant  from  his  most  unjustifiable  though  possibly 
legal  conduct,  and  restore  her  to  her  cherished  home.  She  does 
not  believe  that  Sir  Roger  Palmer  would  wish  to  follow  in  the 
track  of  a  certain  Leinster  nobleman,  hunting  down  lone  old 


APPENDIX. 


399 


ladies,  or  that  he  would  ratify  such  trickery  as  she  has  received 
at  the  hands  of  his  agent. — I  remain  your  obedient  servant, 

“Patrick  Lavelle. 

“  Colouel  Palmer. 

“To  oppress  the  poor  in  judgment,  and  to  do  violence  to  the 
cause  of  the  humble  of  my  people,  that  widows  might  he  their  prey 
and  that  they  might  rob  the  fatherless1'  (Isa.  x.,  1-2).  “Some 
have  removed  land-marks,  and  have  driven  away  the  widow’s  ox 
for  pledge”  (Job,  xxi.,  4).  But  here  it  is  worse;  for  while  there 
was  no  debt  at  all  for  which  a  pledge  might  be  seized,  the  widow’s 
house,  land,  crops,  and  all,  were  confiscated  to  the  rude  hand  of 
power.  And,  therefore,  I  once  more  ask  how  long  is  this  to  last  ? 
How  long  is  the  murderous  regime  of  “  tenancy  at  will”  to  prevail? 
How  long  are  the  Irish  millions  to  be  left  to  the  caprices  of  the 
class  Ormsby  and  Co.  ?  How  long  are  landlords  to  be  permitted 
to  further  rob,  and  spoil,  and  devastate,  and  heart-break ? — “to 
remember  not  mercy,”  but  to  “persecute  the  poor  man,  and  the 
beggar,  and  the  broken  of  heart,  to  put  him  to  death  ?”  (Ps.  cviii. ) 
— I  remain  faithfully  yours, 

Patrick  Layelle. 


Subjoined  is  the  Irish  Times  report  of  the  famous  case 
so  often  referred  to  in  the  foregoing  pages.  It  pretty 
clearly  shows  what  Irish  landlordism  not  alone  may  he, 
hut  actually  is. 

I  would  beg  to  draw  particular  attention  to  the  words 
of  Proudfoot  (p.  418)  :  “  I  pledge  my  oath  what  land 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh  has  there  is  not  worth  £5,”  as  contrasted 
both  with  his  previous  declaration,  that  “  there  was  more 
grass  there  while  his  (M‘Cullagh5s)  cattle  were  in  it,  than 
the  tenants  or  others  could  use” — the  number  of 
M‘Cullagh’s  cattle  being  at  times  from  thirty  to  forty, 
not  to  mention  sheep — as  also  with  a  similar  statement 
of  Mr.  Butt’s.  Surely  grass  enough  for  twenty  or  thirty 
or  forty  kyloes  is  worth  over  £5. 

I  would  also  suggest  special  attention  to  the  evidence 
for  the  defence,  which  completely  justifies  the  statements 
contained  in  my  letters. 

The  charge  of  the  able,  learned,  and  impartial  judge 
is  a  masterpiece,  both  as  a  summary  and  appreciation  of 
the  evidence  produced.  I  recommend  the  re-perusal  of 
the  whole  report  to  both  friend  and  foe  of  the  tenant 
farmers  of  Ireland,  both  within  and  without  the  walls  of 
the  imperial  legislation. 


400 


APPENDIX. 


COURT  OF  QUEEN’S  BENCH. 


Before  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  and  a  City  Special  Jury. 
♦ 

ACTION  FOR  ALLEGED  LIBEL— IMPORTANT  CASE. 

Andrew  M‘Cullagh  v.  Major  Knox. 


This  was  au  action  brought  by  Mr.  Andrew  M'Cullagh,  of  this 
city,  against  Major  Knox,  as  proprietor  of  the  Irish  Times ,  for 
the  publication  of  alleged  libellous  letters  in  the  Irish  Times. 
Damages  were  laid  at  £1,000.  The  defences  were  that  the  letters 
were  not  published  in  the  defamatory  sense  alleged,  and  were  a 
fair  comment  upon  a  matter  of  public  interest  and  notoriety. 

The  following  jury  were  sworn  to  try  the  case — 

Thomas  Snow  (foreman)  Caleb  Palmer,  Joseph  Hill,  George 
Thorpe,  Hugh  Tarpey,  Patrick  Nolan,  Thomas  Raynor,  Thomas 
Orr,  George  Bullock,  Wm.  White,  Alexander  W.  Bay  ley,  James 
Kenny. 

Serjeant  Dowse,  M.P.,  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C.,  Mr.  Forbes  Johnston, 
Q.  C. ,  and  Mr.  Duffin,  instructed  by  Mr.  Henry  Oldham,  appeared 
for  the  plaintiff. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.,  Mr.  Falkiner,  Q.C.,  and  Mr.  Kaye,  LL.D., 
instructed  by  Messrs.  Bloomfield  and  Leahy,  were  for  the 
defendant. 

Mr.  Duffin  opened  the  pleadings. 

Serjeant  Dowse,  in  stating  the  case  for  the  plaintiff,  said  that 
he  would  give  a  brief  outline  of  the  cause  of  action,  in  order  that 
the  jury  might  understand  the  case,  and  apply  their  mind  to  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  all  the  facts  before  they  arrived  at  any 
conclusion.  The  plaintiff,  Mr.  Andrew  M‘Cullagh,  was  a  wine 
merchant  in  the  city  of  Dublin,  and  a  member  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce.  The  defendant  was  Major  Knox,  the  proprietor  of  the 
well-known  and  influential  newspaper,  the  Irish  Times.  He  had 
not  the  slightest  wish  to  say  one  word  in  the  case  derogatory  to 
Major  Knox.  He  was  a  gentleman  of  honor  and  character,  and 
he  (counsel)  had  frequently  seen  Major  Knox-  plead  in  these 
courts,  both  as  plaintiff  and  defendant,  and  never  knew  anything 
to  transpire  to  affect  his  well-known  honor.  The  action  was  insti¬ 
tuted  for  the  publication  of  several  letters  which  the  plaintiff  said 


APPENDIX. 


401 


was  a  libel.  Tlie  letfcei's  did  not  profess  to  be  written  by  the 
editor  of  the  Irish  Times,  but  had  tlie  name  attached  to  them  of  a 
well  known  clergyman  of  the  Catholic  Church,  the  Rev.  Patrick 
Lavelle,  of  Partry.  Mr.  M'Cullagh  felt  it  was  due  to  his  character 
to  bring  this  case  into  court,  and  ask  the  jury  to  pass  their  opinion 
whether  the  charges  made  against  him  were  true  or  not.  In  the 
year  1865  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  and  others  associated  with  him,  formed 
a  company  for  the  purpose  of  advancing  money  on  loan,  to  aid  in 
the  building  of  respectable  houses  by  the  industrious  classes,  and 
the  purchase  of  land,  to  be  improved  by  labor,  and  then  let  or 
sold  to  tenants.  The  first  ordinary  general  meeting  of  the  share¬ 
holders,  about  200  in  number,  wxas  held  on  the  7th  of  July,  1866, 
and  the  beneficial  operations  of  that  company  appeared  fully 
in  the  report  of  that  time.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  was  chairman  of  that 
company.  He  had  associated  with  him,  in  the  management  of  the 
affairs,  Mr.  A.  H.  Bagot,  who  may  have  been  well  known  to 
many  of  them — a  man  of  honor  and  great  credit  in  the  mercan¬ 
tile  community — with  Messrs.  Wight  and  Perry,  and  other  gentle¬ 
men  equally  well  known.  Among  other  portions  of  laud  the 
company  purchased  the  Port  Royal  estate  in  Ballinrobe.  That 
property  consisted  of  something  over  5,000  acres  of  land,  and  it 
was  near  to  and  crossed  the  top  of  Lough  Mask,  extending  down 
some  distance  east  aud  west.  On  the  west  the  estate  went  along 
till  it  met  an  estate  of  the  Bishop  of  Tuam.  The  estate  had 
been  the  property  of  a  person  named  Gildea,  who  became  em¬ 
barrassed  in  circumstances,  and  the  property  was  sold  in  the 
Landed  Estates  Court,  and  purchased  by  the  company.  The  com¬ 
pany  procured  the  services  of  a  very  competent  engineer,  Mr. 
Henry  Brett,  who  was  county  surveyor  for  the  county  of  Wick¬ 
low,  and  was  also  acquainted  with  the  land  in  question  ;  and 
another  gentleman  named  Carson.  The  directors  gave  the  neces¬ 
sary  instructions  for  the  improvement  of  the  estate  by  draining  the 
land,  making  fences,  and  other  improvements,  as  stated  in  the 
report  of  Mr.  Brett.  The  next  thing  of  importance  to  state  was, 
that  among  the  alterations  and  improvements  of  the  estate  it 
became  necessary  to  re-allocate  the  lands,  divide  them  into  stripes, 
and  parcel  out  portions,  so  as  to  distribute  the  tenants  along 
the  property  in  such  a  way  as  that  each  man  would  have  for 
his  owrn  use  a  distinct  and  separate  portion  of  the  estate,  and 
prevent  its  being  enjoyed  in  the  patriarchal  mode  known  as 
the  Rundale  system.  The  company  was  anxious  to  have  this 
system  carried  out.  That  was  the  only  cause  of  disagreement 
connected  with  the  estate,  aud  that  arose  in  but  very  few  and 
isolated  instances.  When  the  company  got  possession  of  the 
estate,  the  tenants  were  holding  it  in  joint  occupancy.  The  moun¬ 
tain  lands  wrere  quite  unfenced.  The  cattle  of  the  adjoining  pro¬ 
prietors  grazed  on  the  property  unrestricted,  some  coming  even  for 
a  distance  of  twenty  miles.  Mr.  Brett,  acting  for  the  company, 
told  the  tenants  that  he  would  recommend  the  land  to  be  striped. 
They  all  assented,  it  being  manifestly  for  their  advantage,  and,  if 

2  c 


402 


APPENDIX. 


his  instructions  were  carried  out,  harmony  and  peace  would  con¬ 
tinue  there  ;  hut  it  was  interrupted  at  the  time  he  was  about 
mentioning,  owing  to  facts  over  which  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  had  no 
control.  In  dividing  the  lands  it  was  not  intended  that  the  fenc¬ 
ing  of  any  tenant  should  go  back  to  the  mountain  top,  because 
the  mountain  was  to  be  reserved  to  the  company  for  a  purpose  not 
then  contemplated ;  but  no  tenant  had  been  deprived  of  his 
grazing  over  the  mountain.  Relying  on  the  consent  of  the  tenants, 
it  was  unnecessary  to  serve  them  with  any  legal  forms  of  notice  to 
surrender  their  holdings.  He  inferred  they  were  all  acquainted 
with  the  notices  to  quit  to  which  he  alluded.  He  was  not  in 
favor  of  these  notices,  neither  was  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh.  There  was 
nothing  savoring  of  harshness  that  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  would  not 
condemn  just  as  much  as  Major  Knox  or  Father  Lavelle.  His 
case  was  that  there  was  no  hardship  of  any  kind.  However,  when 
the  stripes  were  marked  out  and  the  land  divided,  owing  to  cir¬ 
cumstances  which  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  had  nothing  to  do  with,  some  of 
the  tenants  declined  to  make  the  change,  and  the  result  was,  that 
that  which  at  first  was  likely  to  be  doue  in  peace  and  harmony 
turned  out  to  be  a  matter  which  there  would  be  some  difficulty 
in  settling.  Accordingly,  it  was  found  necessary  to  enforce  the 
arrangement  on  some  very  few  tenants,  and  that  accounted  for 
the  service  of  the  notices  to  quit,  which  he  would  mention.  He 
stated,  and  stated  without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  no  intention 
ever  existed  to  dispossess  any  of  the  tenants,  and  no  tenants  had 
been  dispossessed  since  the  company  came  into  possession,  nor  had 
a  single  tenant  emigrated  from  the  oppression  of  this  land  company, 
or  the  chairman,  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh ;  or  the  engineer,  Mr.  Brett ;  or 
the  other  skilled  gentleman,  Mr.  Carson  ;  or  the  manager,  Mr. 
Proudfoot.  They  were  all  told  every  day  that  emigration  was  the 
only  remedy  for  the  misfortunes  of  this  country.  He  did  not 
know  whether  that  might  be  true  or  not,  but  he  supposed  it  was ; 
for,  if  the  emigration  were  carried  on  to  the  extent  these  people 
wished,  there  would  be  no  one  at  all  in  the  country  to  grumble, 
and  then  everything  would  be  nice  and  quiet.  (A  laugh.)  Whe¬ 
ther  it  was  or  was  not,  he  had  a  right  to  say  that  before  the 
Thunderer  in  Abbey-street  came,  there  ought  to  have  been  an  in¬ 
quiry  made  to  see  were  the  statements  correct  in  the  letters  com¬ 
plained  of,  and  something  more  should  have  been  put  on  the  files 
of  the  court  than  that  they  were  a  fair  comment.  It  was  neces¬ 
sary  that  giants  should  have  mercy  ;  and  if  Major  Knox  was  a 
giant,  he  ought  to  take  mire  that  his  club  fell  lightly  upon  the 
people  in  the  neighborhood  where  he  was  wielding  it  in  one  of  his 
fits  of  inspiration.  (A  laugh. )  It  was  found  necessary  to  visit 
those  who  resisted  the  arrangements  of  the  company  with  the 
costs  of  their  obstinacy,  but  tlie  company  afterwards  offered  to 
remit  the  costs  and  forgive  the  tenants  half  a  year’s  rent  for  any 
temporary  inconvenience  they  would  be  put  to  by  the  change  in 
their  holdings,  if  they  agreed  to  it.  Some  of  these  holdings  were 
insufficient  for  their  support,  and  the  object  of  the  company,  to 


APPENDIX. 


403 


allow  them  to  have  such  holdings,  was  to  place  them  in  a  better 
position  than  they  were  in  before.  The  company  drained  the 
property,  built  new  houses  on  it,  and  converted  that  which  was 
spongy  land  into  good  land.  They  offered  leases  to  the  tenants 
who  were  willing  to  take  them.  In  the  district  of  Derassa,  the 
mountain  there  was  used  as  a  common  for  the  surrounding  coun¬ 
try,  and  everyone  who  wished  drove  their  cattle  on  it.  Mr. 
Brett  considered  that  if  a  certain  portion  of  that  mountain  were 
fenced  in,  sufficient  would  still  be  left  for  the  use  of  the  people. 
The  libel  was  written  with  a  ready  pen,  and  by  a  gentleman  who 
had  good  courage,  and  who  he  (counsel)  would  not  say  had  not 
done  good  service,  but  who  sometimes  allowed  his  zeal  to  get  the 
better  of  his  good  judgment.  In  anything  Father  Lavelle  said,x  he 
(counsel)  was  sure  he  believed  it  to  be  true,  or  he  would  not  have 
said  it.  Amongst  other  things,  there  was  something  about  taxes 
in  the  case,  and  he  was  instructed  to  tell  the  jury  that  the  com¬ 
pany  paid  the  taxes  of  the  estate.  He  was  reaching  another  stage 
of  the  case — when  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  became  connected  with  it.  On 
the  1st  of  May,  1867,  Mr.  M‘ Cullagh  became  tenant  of  some  of 
the  unoccupied  mountain,  at  the  rate  of  £30  a  year,  and  for  that 
he  was  made  the  subject  of  as  vigorous  an  assault  in  the  columns 
of  the  Irish  Times  as  ever  was  made  on  the  chairman  of  any 
public  company.  He  put  some  stock  on  it,  and  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh 
would  be  put  on  the  table  as  a  witness,  and  would  expose  the 
justice  of  the  transaction,  and  the  result  would  be,  he  would  leave 
the  court  without  reproach,  as  he  entered  it  without  fear.  He  put- 
stock  on  the  land,  and,  pending  the  erection  of  fences,  he  em¬ 
ployed  a  caretaker  to  mind  the  stock  and  keep  off  trespassers. 
These  fences  were  not  yet  made,  and  the  tenants  still  had  the  run 
of  the  mountain  without  hindrance  or  let.  There  was  sufficient 
grass  for  them  all — he  (counsel)  only  wished  that  everything  else 
in  the  same  part  of  the  country  was  as  abundant.  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh 
was  anxious  to  improve  the  breed  of  cattle  in  this  country.  That 
was  one  crime  laid  to  his  charge,  and  he  (counsel)  agreed  with  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh,  and  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  agreed  with  him — that  he  did  not 
want  to  see  cattle  substituted  for  human  beings,  and  he  did  not 
want  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  mothers  of  flocks  and  herds 
as  a  substitute  for  the  mothers  of  human  beings.  (A  laugh.)  And 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  did  not  want  to  have  anything  to  do  with  them. 
He  procured  some  of  the  best  breed  of  cattle  in  Scotland,  and  he 
did  no  harm  to  any  human  being.  That  was  another  of  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh’s  sins,  and  it  was  certainly  an  aggravating  thing  to 
him  for  this  grievous  offence  to  hear  the  way  his  character  was 
sold  for  one  penny  piece,  throughout  the  whole  length  and  breadth 
of  the  country,  by  means  of  the  great  circulation  of  the  Irish 
Times — (a  laugh) — and  right  good  value  it  is  for  a  penny,  if  it 
were  only  to  count  up  the  advertisements.  (Renewed  laughter.) 
It  was  right  good  value,  and  the  more  it  was  circulated  through 
the  land,  the  more  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  was  libelled.  (Laughter.) 
But  the  worst  part  of  the  case  was  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  had  his 


404 


APPENDIX. 


offices  in  Abbey-street,  opposite  to  Major  Knox’s  establishment, 
and  saw  his  character  bought  for  a  penny  by  thousands.  (Great 
laughter.)  The  Port  .Royal  demesne  contained  about  450  acres, 
of  which  100  was  valuable  grass  land.  This  part  the  company 
found  in  possession  of  a  man  named  Lyder.  He  had  no  means  to 
stock  so  large  a  holding,  and  would  ruin  the  land  by  meadowing 
it,  so  he  was  obliged  to  give  it  up  ;  but  he  is  now  a  tenant  on 
another  farm.  That  place  was  offered  to  a  great  many  people, 
but  no  one  would  take  it,  and  ultimately  it  was  let  to  Mr.  Proud- 
foot,  the  manager  of  the  property,  but  that  did  no  harm  to  any¬ 
one.  The  clergyman  of  the  neighboring  parish  of  Partry  was 
not  injured  by  that,  nor  the  tenants  were  not  injured  by  it.  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  had  nothiug  to  do  with  it  further  thau  through  his 
connection  with  the  company.  Such  was  the  state  of  the  case  up 
to  the  31st  of  December,  1868,  when  the  libels  were  written  and 
published. 

The  first  letter  was  as  follows  : — 

“  To  the  Editor  of  the  Irish  Times. 

“Mount  Partry,  31st  December,  1808. 

“  Sir, — I  ask  you,  for  the  sake  of  the  poor  tenants,  whose  case  1 
am  trying  to  plead  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  to  aid  my 
advocacy  by  at  least  the  publication  of  the  accompanying  letter. — 
I  remain  your  obedient  servant, 

“  Patrick  Lavelle. 


“To  the  Shareholders  of  the  National  Land  and  Building 

Investment  Company. 

“  Mount  Partry,  St.  Stephen’s  Day,  18GS. 

“  Gentlemen, — An  incident,  trifling  in  itself,  and  by  no  means 
unfamiliar  to  the  eyes  of  the  poor  Irish  peasant,  impels  me  to 
forestall  the  time  I  had  marked  out  for  calling  your  most  serious 
attention  to  the  arrangement  of  your  Port  Royal  estate.  The 
incident  is  merely  a  case  of  4  distress’  by  your  manager  here,  Mr. 
Proudfoot,  and  his  bailiff,  which,  I  suppose,  by  way  of  wishing 
him  a  ‘  merry  Christmas,’  they  thought  fit  to  levy  on  a  poor 
man  named  Philip  Henegan,  of  the  townland  of  Derassa.  The 
poor  man  had  an  in-calf  cow,  which  he  purposed  selling  at  the 
approaching  fair  of  Westport  on  New  Year’s  Day.  Hardly  waiting 
to  digest  their  Christmas  dinner,  these  servants  of  yours  made  this 
morning  for  the  poor  man’s  house,  and  distrained  his  cow,  worth  £7 
or  £8,  for  £3  7s.  Gd.  How  the  poor  animal  has  fared  since,  ot 
whether  she  is  to  pass  this  very  threatening  night  in  her  lodgiugs 
on  the  cold  ground  in  the  ‘  pound’  of  the  Port  Royal  estate,  I 
am  unprepared  to  say  ;  likely  before  I  close  this  communication 
I  shall  have  ascertained.  The  fact  is,  that  at  this  moment,  while 
the  angelic  proclamation  of  ‘  peace  on  earth  to  men  of  good  will’ 


APPENDIX. 


405 


still  rings  in  our  ears,  the  poor 'man’s  cow  is  a  prisoner  by  landlord 
law  for  the  year’s  rent  due  on  the  1st  of  last  November.  He  offered 
to  pay  ‘a  half  year’s  rent,  to  quit  the  place  altogether,  and  leave 
his  soil,  his  house  and  barn,  both  built  by  himself,  for  the  other 
£1  17s.  9d,’  yet  he  would  not  be  listened  to.  The  cow  was  the 
pound  of  flesh,  and  that  Mr.  Proudfoot  must  obtain,  no  matter 
what  the  consequences  to  wretched  Philip  Henegan.  And  now,  to 
pass  from  particulars  to  the  general  system. 

“  Allow  me  to  assure  you  that,  in  my  opinion,  there  has  not  been 
such  oppression  practised,  or  attempted  to  be  practised,  in  any 
other  property  in  Ireland  for  the  last  two  years — model  Scully’s 
perhaps  excepted — as  has  been  carried  on  in  this  unfortunate 
estate.  First,  the  tenants  of  this  very  village  were,  without 
ceremony,  and  in  open  violation  of  the  law  of  the  land,  deprived 
of  the  mountain  outlet  which  they  always  had  for  their  little 
stock  of  sheep  and  cattle — the  chief  means  with  which  they 
mainly  paid  their  rent  and  several  other  land  charges,  and  also 
clothed  themselves  and  their  children.  The  village  is  in  a  cold, 
wild,  mountainous  district,  where  the  people  could  never  support 
themselves,  much  less  pay  rent,  on  the  produce  of  the  land  ;  yet 
the  outlet  in  question,  ever,  hitherto,  in  with  the  land,  and  for 
which,  as  being  included  in  their  land,  they  were,  and  still  are, 
paying  rents,  rates,  and  taxes,  was  seized  on  by  your  manager 
and  chairman,  and  stocked  with  Welsh  bullocks  by  themselves. 
Bear  in  mind,  this  was  done  without  even  the  ceremony  of 
demanding  possession — the  company’s,  or  chairman’s,  or  agent’s 
cattle  were  simply  driven  on,  the  people’s  little  stock  expelled  to 
grassless  bogs,  and  if  found  trespassing  (!  !)  in  their  usual  and 
legal  haunts,  driven  to  pound  !  !  And  this  is  how  your  company’s 
programme  of  converting  tenants-at-will  to  owners-in-fee  is  meant 
to  be  carried  out !  Second, — the  spring  and  summer  of  1867 
were  very  trying  to  your  (among  other)  tenants  of  this  mountain 
district — so  trying  that  I  had  to  procure  meal  for  every  single 
soul  of  them,  on  credit,  in  Castlebar,  besides  otherwise  helping 
them  in  their  need.  Thus  the  May  rent  happened,  in  some 
caoes,  not  to  be  paid  until  November,  and  thus  on  the  1st  of 
November  a  year’s  rent  fell  due.  I  pray  you,  gentlemen,  pay 
heed  to  what  followed.  On  the  2nd  November  your  agent 
processed  the  tenants  for  the  rent  that  fell  due  on  the  1st,  thus 
putting  a  cost  of  from  l Is.  to  15s.  on  the  creatures  who  had  only 
just  emerged  from  a  state  of  starvation.  But,  worse  again,  these 
civil  bills,  thus  costing  the  poor  people  so  dear,  could  not  be 
heard  for  full  three  months  afterwards,  or  until  the  month  of 
February  following,  when  the  next  quarter  sessions  would  be 
held  !  And  thus  your  manager  and  chairman  mean  to  convert 
tenants-at-will  into  fee-simple  owners  !  Third, — at  the  same 
time  others  of  your  tenants  were  obliged  to  pass  their  bills  at  three 
months  for  the  half  year’s  rent  then  due,  paying  from  8  to 
10  per  cent,  interest.  Thus,  for  10s.  6d.  one  man  had  to  pay  Cd. 
Another  somewhat  model  process  of  elevating  tenants-at-will  to 


406 


APPENDIX. 


liolders-in-fee.  You  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  rents  thus  ex¬ 
acted  the  day  they  fell  due,  or  a  few  days  after,  were  paid  in  no 
other  estate  in  the  county  until  the  period  when  these  bills  were 
matured.  I  care  not  whether  these  bills  were  discounted  or  not 
at  any  bank  or  other  commercial  firm.  If  they  were,  they  were 
done  for  fully  half  what  the  people  were  charged,  for  money 
was  a  drug  at  the  time  ;  if  they  were  not,  then  the  company  has 
pocketed  the  poor  people’s  money,  in  shape  of  discount,  by  way, 
of  course,  of  enabling  them  eventually  to  become  owners-in-fee. 
Fourth, — a  system  of  ‘ striping  ’  was  introduced,  which,  for  the 
life  of  me,  I  could  not  understand  at  first,  as  the  whole  estate 
was  striped  a  few  years  ago  by  the  late  agent,  Mr.  Stanhope 
Kenny,  of  Ballinrobe.  Possession  was  soon  demanded  of  the  be¬ 
wildered  tenants,  which  some,  in  utter  despair,  refused.  Then 
came  a  volley  of  notices  to  quit,  last  May,  with  the  consequent 
demand  for  possession  last  November,  which,  in  most  cases,  was 
obeyed.  And  now  comes  out  the  secret.  The  rents  are  raised 
to  a  figure  varying  from  10  to  40  and  50  per  cent.  !  and  the 
unhappy  creatures  made  to  sign  their  consent  to  meet  this  fearful 
rise  before  they  are  reinstated  in  possession.  Thus  the  people 
are  in  a  state  of  mind  bordering  on  distraction.  Many  have 
already  made  up  their  minds  to  emigrate  rather  than  remain  to 
be  utterly  impoverished.  It  is  on  this  account  that  poor  Henegan, 
whose  cow  is  a  prisoner  at  the  bar  of  Mr.  Proudfoot  and  Mr. 
Chairman  M‘Cullagh,  is  resolved  to  quit  his  country.  He  was 
driven  into  a  4  stripe  ’  which,  he  says,  would  hardly  feed  a 
snipe,  for  which  he  would  have  to  pay  some  £4  or  so  a-year,  and 
while  he  has  means  to  take  him  off  he  says  he  will  join  the 
landlord-made  exodus  from  Ireland.  No  doubt  the  object  of  this 
rise  in  the  rent  is  to  enhance  the  market  price  of  the  estate,  of 
which  your  chairman  stated  at  the  ‘  third  annual  general 
meeting  of  the  shareholders,  ’  held  this  year,  that  ‘  it  was  under 

the  serious  consideration  of  the  directors  to  dispose . 

But  if  the  estate  were  now  sold,  when  the  works  were  un¬ 
finished  [a  few  walls  by  the  road-side,  three  or  four  stys  of 
houses,  and  drains  through  bogs — all  perfectly  valueless  to  the 
poor  tenant],  it  would  not  fetch  the  price  which  they  might 
reasonably  expect.’  Not  at  all.  The  new  rental  will  enhance 
the  market  price  of  the  estate  ;  but  I  say  from  my  heart,  ‘  God 
help  the  purchaser.’  He  will  buy  an  estate,  the  rent  of  which 
he  need  never  expect  to  receive,  because  no  human  iudustry 
could  squeeze  it  out  of  the  land.  As  I  am  to  address  you 
again  more  in  detail,  as  regards  the  increased  rents,  I  shall  now 
conclude,  with  the  expression  of  my  belief  that  the  cattle  are  the 
private  property  of  your  chairman,  who  is  thus  feeding  on  the 
grass  for  which  your  tenants  are  paying  him  rent.  And  my 
reason  for  this  belief  is  that  the  sheep  in  the  Port  Itoyal  ‘  demesne,’ 
out  of  which  the  tenant  in  occupation  when  the  property  was 
purchased  was  evicted,  are  marked  with  his  brand.  At  all  events, 
they  are  eating  the  grass  for  which  the  tenants  are  paying.  I 


APPENDIX. 


407 


beg  of  you,  gentlemen,  as  Christian  men,  to  interpose  between 
your  tenants  and  those  who  would  utterly  ruin  them.  The 
consciousness  of  haviug  done  so  will  be  more  gain  to  you  than 
any  increased  dividend,  wrung  from  the  vita's  of  the  people. 
Your  company  styles  itself  ‘National.’  Let  its  national  character 
be  other  than  the  fame  of  Irish  landlordism,  which  the  Times 
some  years  ago  declared  to  stink  in  the  nostrils  of  the  empire. 
At  least,  let  not  your  company  out-Herod  Herod.  Call  your 
directors  to  account,  and  merit  the  thanks  and  blessings  of  your 
despairing  sei’fs.  I  shall  furnish  further  details  in  my  next. 
Meantime,  I  remain  your  faithful  servant, 

“  Patrick  Lavelle.” 

On  the  21st  of  January  another  letter  appeared,  and  was  headed 
“  How  to  evict  without  notice  to  quit.”  It  certainly  would 
be  a  novel  discovery  to  be  able  to  bring  that  about,  and  the  dis¬ 
coverer  by  some  persons  would  be  considered  a  benefactor  of  his 
species.  (A  laugh.)  The  letter  proceeded  :  “  It  was  only  on  yes¬ 
terday  I  received  the  Irish  Times  of  the  14th  [He  was  without 
the  Irish  Times  for  four  days,  and  unless  Mr.  Lavelle  had  his 
theology  to  fall  back  upon,  he  would  have  been  as  bad  as  Robinson 
Crusoe  (a  laugh),]  through  no  fault  of  your  agent  at  Ballinrobe, 
containing  an  article  exculpatory  of  the  directors  of  the  National 
Land  Investment  Company.  In  the  meantime  I  repeat  every 
single  statement  contained  in  my  letters  as  to  the  management 
of  the  estate.  Tenants  have  been,  without  even  form  of  law,  de¬ 
prived  of  their  mountain  outlet ;  their  rents  have  been  raised  in 
several  townlands  to  a  figure  varying  from  30  to  35,  50,  and  GO  per 
cent.,  in  round  numbers,  over  Gnfhth’s  valuation,  while  their  pas¬ 
ture  has  been  taken  away  to  feed  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  stock.”  Ser¬ 
jeant  Dowse  went  on  to  say  that  the  legal  advisers  of  the  defendant 
had  put  in  a  plea  that  what  had  been  written  was  a  fair  comment 
on  the  conduct  of  Mr.  M'Cullagh.  Major  Knox  himself  was  too 
honorable  a  gentlemau  to  do  anything  or  publish  anything  that 
he  did  not  believe  to  be  true,  and  he  was  certain  that  before  that 
gentleman  heard  the  whole  of  the  case,  he  would  see  that  a  wrong 
had  been  done  a  respectable  gentleman.  The  author  of  the  letter 
afterwards  became  a  little  theological,  and  he  illustrated  his  case 
by  a  very  favorite  illustration,  when  a  man  wanted  to  show  that 
a  grievous  wrong  had  been  done.  The  story  wTas  from  Sacred 
"Writ,  and  he  said,  “This  reminds  one  powerfully  of  the  parable 
of  Nathan.  The  great  rich  man” — (that  was  Mr.M‘Cullagh,  a  sort 
of  Connemara  nabob) — (laughter) — “is  visited  by  a  stranger.” 
That  is  not  Father  Lavelle.  ‘  ‘  He  had  flocks  and  herds  to  any  ex¬ 
tent.”  Those  were  the  twenty  kyloes.  (Laughter.)  “His  poor 
neighbor  has  but  the  little  pet  lamb  j”  that  was  the  small  moun¬ 
tain  pasture.  ‘  ‘  Instead  of  picking  a  sheep  or  an  ox  out  of  his 
own  extensive  flocks,  he  sets  his  eye  on  the  poor  man’s  lamb,  and 
kills  it  for  the  stranger’s  feast.  Is  there  no  analogy  in  the  two 
cases  ?  It  often  struck  me,  reflecting  on  that  beautiful  lesson,  that 


403 


appendix. 


the  rich  man  must  have  been  a  landlord  of  about  the  worst  Irish 
type — at  least  that  he  must  have  had  a  power  over  the  poor  man  as 
irresponsible  as  that  which  the  Irish  landlord  wields  over  his 
wretched  serfs,  and  which  is  so  forcibly  illustrated  in  Mr.  M'Cul- 
lagh’s  dealings  with  his  unfortunate  tenants.  The  ‘little  lamb’ 
seems  to  have  been  seized  in  broad  daylight,  just  like  the  Derassa 
pasturage.”  It  was  nothing  to  him  (Serjeant  Dowse),  or  to  the 
jury,  whether  wThat  the  Rev.  Patrick  Lavelle  said  about  the  Irish 
landlords  was  true  or  false.  They  might  have  their  own  opinions 
upon  that  matter,  as  they  had  upon  most  other  matters  in  the 
country.  Some  of  the  jury  might  have  the  idea  that  the  powers 
of  the  landlord  should  be  restricted  within  such  limits  as  hu¬ 
manity  and  law  together  were  able  to  restrict  them,  and  there 
might  be  others  on  the  jury  who  would  agree  with  the  opinion  of 
Sir  Roger  De  Coverley,  who  was  a  landlord  himself  in  his  day  and 
generation.  (Laughter.)  Prom  the  Rev.  Patrick  Lavelle’ s  stand¬ 
point,  the  worst  Irish  type  of  a  landlord  wTas  not  a  respectable 
member  of  society,  and  he  was  an  oppressor,  a  wrong-doer,  a  man 
who  disregarded  the  laws  of  man,  and  who  cared  not  for  the  laws 
of  God.  He  (Serjeant  Dowse)  had  an  opinion  upon  the  subject 
himself  which  he  should  express  at  the  proper  time.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
had  been  pointed  out  as  a  landlord  of  the  worst  Irish  type,  and 
that  was  said  to  be  a  fair  comment  in  the  defence  of  Major  Knox, 
who  ought  to  be  able  to  give  an  opinion  of  what  a  landlord  aud  a 
gentleman  should  be — he  being  a  landlord  and  a  gentleman  him¬ 
self.  He  was  not  quite  sure  whether  he  was  the  former  or  not, 
but  he  certainly  was  the  latter.  The  letter  went  on,  “  I  pray 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  to  reflect  on  the  parable.”  This  was  written  for 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s  spiritual  good,  and  Major  Knox  was  made  the 
mediurh  of  preaching  a  sermon  to  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  for  which  Mr. 
M ‘Cullagh  only  paid  one  penny,  and  certainly  that  was  a  moderate 
sum  to  an  ecclesiastical  superior,  and  was  a  cheap  illustration  of  the 
voluntary  system.  (Laughter.)  “Reflect  on  the  parable.”  He 
(Serjeant  Dowse)  thought  that  if  even  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  was  to  be 
converted,  Father  Lavelle  was  not  the  man  who  would  do  it. 
“Reflect  on  the  parable,  and  on  David’s  answer  to  the  question  of 
the  prophet :  ‘  Amen  ;  the  man  who  hath  done  these  things  is 
a  child  of  death.’  ”  This  was  a  very  serious  matter— and  no  person 
could  point  out  the  serious  nature  of  it  better  than  the  defendant 
at  the  proper  time  and  on  the  proper  occasion — to  tell  the  excit¬ 
able  tenantry  (because  all  Irishmen  wrere  said  to  be  excitable,  as 
if  no  Englishman  did  anything  rash)— to  tell  the  excitable  tenantry 
down  in  that  district  that  they  had  fled  and  were  to  fly  before  the 
eye  of  the  oppressor— to  tell  them  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  had  plun¬ 
dered  them  of  their  property,  and  dealt  out  injustice  without  even 
form  of  law — that  he  had  annihilated  every  vestige  of  humanity 
in  his  bosom,  because  he  must  have  done  so  before  being  guilty  of 
the  conduct  attributed  to  him  ;  and  then  ask  hira  to  visit  the 
estate,  saying,  “  You  are  the  rich  man  described  by  the  prophet, 


APPENDIX. 


409 


wlio  took  the  pet  lamb,  sparing  yonr  own  flocks  and  herds.”  What 
was  the  judgment  upon  that?  That  Mr.  M'Cullagh  was  a  child  of 
death,  and  that  that  was  a  fair  comment.  The  statement  he  was 
a  child  of  death  meant  one  of  two  things,  either  that  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
was  a  man  who  dealt  out  death  himself  by  his  cruel  and  remorse¬ 
less  conduct,  or  a  man  who  for  his  cruel,  remorseless  conduct 
ought  to  have  death  dealt  out  to  himself.  It  was  averred  for  the 
defendant  that  the  observations  were  a  fair  comment  upon  the 
conduct  of  Mr.  M'Cullagh.  Now  with  respect  to  a  fair  comment, 
he  (Serjeant  Dowse)  was  not  a  man  who  had  the  slightest  inclina¬ 
tion  or  wish  to  limit  the  right  of  free  discussion.  They  lived  in 
a  free  country,  and  free  discussion  was  their  birthright.  He  be¬ 
lieved  that  the  press  had  done  more  to  secure  the  liberties  they 
had  acquired  than  any  other  of  the  institutions  that  were  at  pre¬ 
sent  existing  in  the  land,  and  he  was  not  desirous  in  the  slightest 
degree  to  limit  the  freedom  of  the  press.  He  agreed  with  the 
great  author  of  the  paper  upon  the  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing, 
that  to  know,  to  speak,  to  write  freely  according  to  conscience, 
was  a  liberty  to  be  prized  above  all  other  liberties,  and  he  was 
not  wishing  in  the  slightest  degree  to  limit  that  liberty,  or  dis¬ 
courage  any  person  in  honest  and  free  discussion.  There  was  a 
limit  to  everything.  If  a  man  put  himself  forward  in  a  prominent 
public  position,  he  would  expect  to  receive  a  little  more  attention 
than  people  content  to  walk  in  the  dull,  listless  way  in  which  the 
majority  of  mankind  are  contented  to  live  and  dwell ;  and  conse¬ 
quently  the  public  man  was  made  the  butt  for  praise,  and  more 
frequently  for  censure  ;  but  there  was  nothing  wrong  in  that,  if 
the  praise  or  censure  were  conferred  upon  him  from  just  motives. 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh  was  not  in  the  position  of  a  public  man.  He  was 
not  a  prime  minister.  If  he  were,  he  might  have  the  entire  vials 
of  a  nation’s  wrath  cast  upon  his  head.  He  was  a  merchant, 
who  had  a  respectable  name  and  position,  and  was  of  a  respectable 
family,  esteemed  by  liis  friends,  and  respected  by  his  fellow- 
citizens,  and  was  it  to  be  said  that  because  he  put  himself  forward 
as  the  chairman  of  a  company  like  this,  he  was  to  be  made  the 
vile  butt  for  every  scornful  finger  to  be  pointed  at  ?  His  public  acts, 
if  they  deserved  stigma  and  censure,  should  be  stigmatized  and  cen¬ 
sured.  Counsel  then  quoted  the  judgment  of  the  Lord  Chief  Justice 
of  England,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  lawyers  of  these  kingdoms, 
with  reference  to  the  freedom  of  the  press,  and  he  had  pushed  the 
boundaries  of  free  discussion  as  far  as  any  judge  could  possibly  do, 
but  he  had  been  obliged  to  keep  it  within  reasonable  limits,  because 
if  they  did  not,  they  would  exceed  as  much  the  cause  of  justice  and 
fair  play  as  if  they  confined  it  within  the  most  stringent  limits. 
The  Lord  Chief  Justice,  in  one  passage,  said  that  in  commenting 
on  every  matter,  a  public  writer,  as  much  as  a  private  writer,  was 
bound  to  attend  to  the  truth.  Well,  he  thought  that  that  was  not 
too  much  to  ask.  The  editorial  “we”  was  one  of  the  institutions 
of  the  state.  Some  anonymous  individual  might  come  forward 
in  a  public  newspaper  with  that  great  “we,”  and  tend  to  shake 


410 


APPENDIX. 


dynasties  ;  but  if  anyone  saw  the  man  he  might  be  inclined  to 
think  that  the  “we”  should  be  spelled  with  two  “  ees.”  (Laughter.) 
With  respect  to  the  law,  as  he  had  quoted  it,  he  thought  there 
could  be  no  difference  of  opinion  ;  but  there  was  this  to  be  borne 
in  mind  and  never  to  be  neglected,  that  the  plea  in  this  case  was 
that  these  alleged  libels  were  a  fair  comment  upon  the  conduct  of 
Mr.  M;Cullagh.  They  had  not  undertaken  to  prove  that  the 
statements  were  true.  They  might  have  justified  them  in  extenso, 
but,  indeed,  they  had  practically  done  the  same  thing.  It  was 
stated  in  the  defence,  that  “  the  management  of  the  estate  was  a 
matter  of  great  notoriety.”  Well,  he  was  sure  that  anything  Father 
Lavelle  was  engaged  in,  or  anything  that  Father  Lavelle  and 
Major  Knox  were  engaged  in  together,  would  be  a  matter  of  great 
notoriety.  It  would  be  like  the  conjunction  of  a  couple  of  planets 
for  a  great  event  in  the  firmament ;  but  he  hoped  there  would  be 
no  obscuration  when  the  case  was  over,  aud  that  they  would  both 
shine  as  brilliantly  when  it  was  over  as  they  did  at  the  present 
time.  (Laughter. )  Counsel,  in  conclusion,  said  he  hoped  he  had 
not  said  anything  injuriously  reflecting  on  the  character  of  Major 
Knox  or  of  Father  Lavelle,  or  said  anything  except  in  so  far  as  he 
was  justified  in  doing  by  the  documents  that  had  been  published. 
He  had  merely  stated  the  case  according  to  his  instructions,  and 
he  hoped  he  would  be  able  to  prove  that  they  were  correct  and 
proper  ;  and  he  was  satisfied  that  the  jury,  as  fair  men,  would  say 
that  whatever  the  conduct  of  an  Irish  landlord  or  oppressor  might 
be — whatever  the  conduct  of  the  rich  man  who  stole  the  pet  lamb 
of  the  poor  man  might  be,  and  however  it  was  to  be  condemned 
by  just  men — he  hoped  that  they  would  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  was  not  the  oppressor,  nor  the  rich  man  who 
took  the  pet  lamb  for  the  purpose  of  feeding  the  stranger  ;  and  if 
they  did  so,  they  would  say  that  the  defendant  in  this  case  ex¬ 
ceeded  the  power  that  the  law  conferred  upon  him,  by  giving  pub¬ 
lication  in  his  widely  circulated,  respected,  esteemed,  and  honor¬ 
able  newspaper,  to  a  slander  on  the  character  of  a  gentleman 
hitherto  irreproachable  in  his  public  and  private  conduct.  It 
would  be  for  the  jury  to  decide  this  issue  as  just  and  fair  men,  and 
he  reposed  confidence  in  their  wise  and  honest  counsel. 

Mr.  Andrew  M  ‘Cullagh,  the  plaintiff,  examined  by  Mr.  F. 
Johnston :  I  am  chairman  of  the  Land  Investment  Society,  which 
was  formed  in  ’65,  for  lending  money  for  building  purposes  and  for 
acquiring  land ;  this  is  a  report  of  our  first  proceeding,  on  27th  July, 
’66 ;  Mr.  Brett  was  our  engineer ;  I  remember  the  Port  Koyal 
estate  was  purchased  some  time  in  ’66  ;  I  have  been  down  there 
frequently,  and  made  myself  acquainted  with  the  condition  of  it ; 
it  was  let  in  lots  to  the  tenants  ;  the  engineer  recommended  the 
company  to  “  stripe”  it ;  Mr.  Proudfoot  was  appointed  agent,  and 
went  to  live  there  ;  I  took  a  portion  of  the  mountain  pasture  my¬ 
self  ;  I  was  to  have  the  upper  part  of  it,  and  paid  £30  a  year  for 
it ;  I  stocked  it  myself,  and  put  some  kyloes  on  it ;  that  is  the 
minute  of  the  board  letting  the  land  to  me — the  mountain  portion 


APPENDIX. 


411 


(Reads  minute  of  24th  J uly,  ’67)  ;  I  am  advised  that  £30  is  more 
than  the  value  of  it. 

Did  you  curtail  in  any  way  or  injure  the  tenants  in  the  right  of 
common  ’—Never,  nor  did  I  hear  of  anyone  doing  so  ;  I  believe  the 
herd  never  did ;  it  was  the  habit,  1  heard,  of  the  tenants  to  graze 
their  cattle  on  this  mountain ;  I  remember  the  Rev.  D.  Lavelle 
sending  complaints  to  the  board ;  I  don’t  recollect  what  they  were, 
but  they  were  investigated. 

Did  they  prove  groundless  ? 

Mr.  Heron  :  I  object  to  that.  He  must  state  what  they  were. 

The  Chief  Justice  said  the  objection  was  well  founded. 

Examination  resumed  :  I  am  not  aware  of  the  value  of  the  land ; 
I  don’t  know  the  Widow  Gibbons  nor  Henehan  of  my  knowledge ; 
I  heard  of  them  ;  I  know  the  Port  Royal  demesne ;  I  was  never  in 
possession  of  it ;  money  was  spent  on  it  by  the  company,  but  not 
by  me  ;  the  people  are  not  persecuted  ;  I  never  gave  directions  to 
persecute  them,  nor  did  anyone  I  know  of ;  the  company  spent 
over  £2,000  on  improving  the  estate,  in  making  drains,  fencing, 
and  building  houses  for  the  tenants  ;  one  side  of  the  mountain  is 
now  fenced  off  to  improve  the  pasture  ;  the  company  offered  leases 
to  the  tenants,  the  same  tenure  we  had  ourselves  ;  we  never  indi¬ 
vidually  offered  leases,  but  it  was  understood  they  would  be  given 
if  applied  for.  There  was  a  circular  to  that  effect. 

Mr.  Heron  asked  to  have  that  circular  produced.  (Circular  pro¬ 
duced.  ) 

The  Chief  Justice  considered  this  was  not  evidence. 

Serjeant  Dowse  said  they  would  not  press  it.  (The  circular  was 
handed  in  and  marked.) 

Examination  continued :  I  never  myself  told  any  individual 
tenant  they  would  get  leases  ;  I,  with  other  members  of  the  board, 
occasionally  gave  directions  as  to  the  management  of  the  estate  ; 
I  read  the  letter  in  the  Irish  Times  published  on  the  4th  of  J anuary, 
the  day  it  was  published  ;  there  was  nothing  done  in  connection 
with  the  estate  to  justify  that. 

So  the  land  was  so  poor  the  tenants  could  not  support  tbem- 
se’v  s  ?  They  paid  rent  and  grazed  their  cattle  on  the  common  ; 
I  grazed  that  common  also ;  there  was  grass  enough  for  my  own 
cattle  and  the  cattle  of  the  tenants  ;  the  tenants,  I  believe,  do  not 
pay  county  cess  for  that  mountain. 

Have  the  tenants  as  yet  paid  an  increased  rent?  Did  they  con¬ 
sent  to  the  “  striping’-’  ?  I  heard  they  did.  There  is  a  new  rental 
in  process  of  being  formed. 

Mr.  Heron. — Sufficient  for  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof. 

Witness. — After  the  first  letter  was  published  I  had  an  inter¬ 
view  with  Major  Knox  ;  he  was  sorry  it  did  appear,  and  explained 
that  a  jimior  hand  had  charge  of  that  department,  and  owing  to 
that  circumstance  the  letter  inadvertently  got  into  print ;  I  asked 
him  to  publish  an  article  repudiating  the  letter  ;  he  stated  he  would 
publish  any  refutation  of  the  article,  and  call  attention  to  it  in  an 
editorial  paragraph. 


412 


APPENDIX. ' 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  D.  C.  Heron,  Q.C. — An  officer  of  the 
company  wrote  a  letter  of  refutation  to  Mr.  Proudfoot ;  it  was 
published  the  14th  of  January  ;  I  read  the  leading  article  in  the 
Irish  Times  on  the  same  subject,  published  the  14th.  (Mr.  Heron 
read  the  article  referred  to. ) 

Was  it  part  of  the  plan  of  the  company  to  give  the  tenants  fixity 
of  tenure?  Yes. 

Was  the  company  started  for  profit  or  philanthropy?  Chiefly 
for  profit ;  one  million  was  the  nominal  capital ;  the  secretary  wrote 
the  prospectus. 

Was  one  of  the  objects  of  the  company  to  secure  exemption  of 
rent  ?  Yes,  for  houses  ;  we  bought  the  estate  for  the  purpose  of 
X>rofit ;  we  appointed  Proudfoot  on  the  purchase  at  a  salary  of  £60 
a  year,  and  a  commission  on  the  rents  ;  the  rental  was  £900  a  year 
and  £1,000;  we  paid  £10,500  for  it;  I  don’t  kuow  what  was 
Griffith’s  valuation;  Proudfoot  very  much  had  the  management  him¬ 
self. 

Who  gave  directions  to  issue  processes  of  ejectments  ?  I  am  not 
able  to  answer  that  question. 

There  is  a  notice  to  quit  of  the  2nd  November  for  rent  due  on 
the  1st.  Who  issued  that? 

Chief  Justice  :  There  must  be  some  mistake. 

Mr.  Heron  :  There  is  not,  my  lord.  I  have  a  sheaf  of  them. 

Serjeant  Dowse  :  You  have  no  right  to  say  that. 

Mr.  Heron  :  Who  had  your  authority  to  prove  that  ejectment  ? 
I  never  saw  this  before ;  I  presume  it  was  Proudfoot. 

On  your  oath,  don’t  you  know  it  was  never  demanded  ?  I  do  not 
know  it. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C. — 1  produce  another  civil  bill  ejectment  with 
your  name  signed  to  it,  dated  2nd  November,  ’67,  against  Matthias 
Conway,  amount  £6  14s.  6d. ;  I  produce  a  third  of  the  same  date, 
James  Henehan  and  John  Walsh  defendants,  amount  £7  Is.,  being 
one  year’s  rent.  Did  you  hear  J  udge  Fitzgerald  characterize  that 
as  grievous  oppression  ?  (Objected  to. ) 

Is  it  good  management  of  an  estate  to  issue  ejectments  on  the 
2nd  for  rent  due  on  the  1st  ?  I  don’t  know  it. 

Don’t  you  know  it  was  done  constantly  ?  I  do  not. 

Was  there  not  great  distress  in  that  year  ’67  ?  There  was. 

No  grass  and  the  cattle  dying?  I  do  not  know  that. 

Don’t  you  know  in  ’67  there  were  subscriptions  from  all  parts  of 
the  world  to  relieve  those  poor  people  ?  I  do  not ;  I  sent  down 
several  tons  of  meal  myself  to  them. 

Because  you  considered  it  necessary?  Yes  ;  I  do  not  believe 
there  was  any  unusual  distress  similar  to  what  often  happens  in 
Ireland. 

Were  not  the  cattle  dying  then  for  want  of  grass?  I  don’t 
know  ;  I  put  my  cattle  on  the  mountain  in  the  August  of  ’67  ;  I 
directed  that  to  he  done  ;  I  did  not  inform  the  tenants  of  my  inten¬ 
tion  to  do  so ;  at  that  time  the  tenants  Jicid  a  right  of  grazing  on  the 
mountain  outlet;  the  mountain  was  occupied  by  ' the  tenants,  and  they 


APPENDIX. 


413 


had  not  given  up  tlieir  right  to  it ;  I  know  a  right  of  common  on  a 
mountain  like  this  is  indispensable  to  the  existence  of  a  mountain 
farmer  ;  they  could  not  keep  cattle  without  it  ;  the  mountain  was  to  be 
divided ,  and  it  was  agreed  the  lower  part  was  to  be  exclusively  for 
the  use  of  the  tenants,  and  I  took  the  upper  part ;  the  fence  was 
never  made. 

A  Juror  (Alderman  Tarpey)  :  Was  it  advertised  to  be  let  ?  It 
was  not,  but  it  was  known  in  the  county. 

When  you  took  possession  you  drove  in  without  the  fence  being 
made  ?  Yes. 

Were  the  cattle  you  drove  in  foreign  cattle  ?  No. 

Serjeant  Dowse :  You  don’t  call  a  Scotchman  a  foreigner. 
(Laughter. ) 

Examination  resumed  :  I  read  the  whole  of  the  first  letter  of  Mr. 
Lavelle’s  ;  I  made  inquiry  about  the  case  of  Thomas  Henehan  and 
Philip  Henehan  mentioned  there.  (Produces  notices  of  distress 
served  on  those  men  for  £3  7  s.  6d.  for  the  year’s  rent  due  on  the 
1st  November,  and  distrained  for  the  day  after  Christmas  day.) 
Proudfoot  had  the  authority  of  the  board  and  my  authority  for 
that. 

A  Juror :  I  would  like  to  see  the  authority. 

The  Chief  Justice  :  He  is  responsible  as  chairman  of  the  com¬ 
pany  for  all  the  acts  done  by  the  agent.  M‘Cullagli’s  name  is 
signed  to  it,  and  he  is  just  as  much  responsible  for  it  as  if  he  did  it 
himself. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C. — Did  you  know  that  this  Proudfoot  was  issu¬ 
ing  processes  and  distraining  the  tenants  ?  I  did  not.  He  only 
did  his  duty. 

Mr.  Heron  :  He  only  did  his  duty.  So  be  it.  How  many  cattle 
did  you  drive  in  on  the  mountain  outlet  ?  30,  and  50  or  00  sheep 
the  first  year,  and  about  the  same  number  the  second  year.  I  don’t 
know  the  number  of  my  sheep  there  at  present. 

Did  you  circulate  the  letter  against  Father  Lavelle  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  the  company  ?  I  did  not  myself,  nor  did  the  company. 

Did  you  know  the  spring  and  summer  of  ’67  w'ere  trying  to  the 
tenants  ?  I  did  not  make  a  comparison.  I  believe  the  Lev.  Mr. 
Lavelle  procured  meal  for  our  tenants,  but  they  did  not  want  it. 

How  many  processes  were  issued  by  you  on  the  2nd  November 
for  rent  due  on  the  1st.  It  might  be  two  or  twenty. 

Did  you  approve  of  that  treatment  ?  The  agent  issued  the  pro¬ 
cesses,  as  I  understand,  one  in  each  townland. 

Did  he  inform  you  of  the  bills  he  got  from  them  ?  He  charged 
them  the  four  pence  in  the  pound  penalty  on  those  bills  for  want 
of  punctuality,  and  for  not  paying  in  ready  money.  I  am  very 
sorry  he  did  it. 

Did  you  disapprove  of  it?  T  did,  and  told  him  so.  As  far  as 
that  goes,  Father  Lavelle  did  good  service. 

Did  you  serve  notice  to  quit  every  half  year  ?  I  cannot  say. 

Were  they  only  notices  to  quit  in  terror  cm  ?  A  great  many  of 
the  tenants  got  those  notices  to  (put. 


414 


APPENDIX. 


The  rental  was  how  much  ?  £900  a  year,  and  I  don’t  know  to 
what  extent  it  is  sought  to  raise  the  rents. 

A  Juror — Do  you  hold  the  land  in  fee  ?  No,  we  hold  it  by  a 
bishop’s  lease. 

Ai'e  not  the  tenants  on  the  mountain  outlet  paying  their  rent 
for  the  commonage  as  well  as  the  land?  Yes. 

Another  Juror — How  much  of  the  land  were  you  to  get  for  the 
£30  a  year  ?  One-third,  I  think  ;  two-thirds  to  the  tenants,  and 
one -third  to  me. 

Did  the  company  buy  any  copies  of  the  paper  containing  Proud- 
foot’s  letter  ?  I  think  not ;  I  saw  a  statement  in  Mr.  Lavelle’s 
letter  that  the  rents  were  raised  30,  40,  and  50  per  cent,  over 
Griffith’s  valuation  ;  the  rent  is  increased,  but  I  can’t  say  to  what 
extent ;  in  point  of  fact,  no  increased  rent  has  yet  been  exacted 
from  the  tenants. 

The  Chief  Justice — It  is  quite  plain  there  is  a  process  going  on 
of  making  a  new  rental. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C. — Did  yoxi  know  that  the  tenants  were  pro¬ 
cessed  for  fees  to  be  paid  to  surveyors  ?  I  did  not  know  of  it,  but 
I  heard  of  it ;  it  was  not  authorized  by  me  ;  I  kuow  Thomas 
Linskey  ;  he  was  employed  under  Mr.  Brett ;  he  processed  some 
tenants  for  work  done  by  himself  for  them  ;  I  personally  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  exaction  of  those  fees. 

In  addition  to  processes  of  ejectment  for  non-payment  of  rent, 
did  you  authorize  processes  for  the  recovery  of  rent  ?  The 
solicitor,  I  suppose,  advised  it.  (Process  against  Pat  Angel,  of 
Cloonee,  hauded  in  and  marked,  and  an  ejectment  of  the  2nd 
Api'il,  1869.) 

Did  you  know  that  the  agent  of  the  estate  was  suing  an  £8 
tenant  in  the  Queen’s  Bench  ?  I  heard  it ;  I  did  not  really  know 
what  the  nature  of  the  proceeding  was  ;  (another  notice  of  eject¬ 
ment,  signed  by  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  handed  in)  ;  that  was  dismissed 
by  the  Chairman. 

Did  you  sign  the  notices  to  quit  yourself  ?  I  signed  a  great 
many  of  them. 

The  notice  was  signed  29th  April,  1868. 

Do  you  mean  to  say  when  you  signed  those  notices  you  merely 
signed  in  terrorem  ?  They  were  never  signed  to  get  possession  ; 
they  were  only  served  to  effect  the  change  in  the  holding. 

Have  you  in  writing  the  rent  the  tenants  are  i>aying?  I  have 
not ;  Mr.  Proudfoot  has  it. 

Were  your  sheep  ever  in  the  Port  Boyal  demesne?  No  ;  they 
were  not ;  I  often  saw  the  old  rental,  but  I  did  not  see  the  new  one. 

Did  you  let  the  Port  Royal  demesne  to  Proudfoot  ?  The 
company  did  at  £200 ;  there  are  300  or  400  acres  in  it ;  there  is  a 
house  there. 

How  much  did  the  company  spend  on  that  place-  before  letting 
it  to  Proudfoot  ?  About  £30  on  the  house,  but  large  sums  have 
been  spent -there  since  ;  I  never  told  the  tenants  that  I  intended  to 
convert  them  from  tenants  at  will  into  fee  farm. 


APPENDIX. 


415 


Did  you  take  from  them  their  old  turbary  ?  Not  that  I  am 
aware  of.  Did  you  hear  of  this  before  ?  No. 

Did  you  make  any  inquiry  ?  No  ;  we  always  referred  these 
things  to  Mr.  Brett,  who  satisfied  the  board ;  I  knew  nothing  of 
the  I  0  Us  for  eleven  shillings. 

When  you  changed  the  tenants  did  you  leave  them  in  their  old 
houses  ?  Yes  ;  we  are  building  new  houses  for  some. 

Did  you  write  a  letter  ?  Yes,  to  the  Galway  Vindicator, 
shortly  after  Proudfoot’s  letter,  in  order  to  contradict  a  statement 
that  was  prejudicial  to  me  ;  the  statement  that  I  referred  to  about 
paying  a  higher  rent  than  anyone  else  referred  to  the  £30  ;  we 
had  several  looking  at  the  Port  Eoyal  estate,  but  no  one  would 
take  it,  and  it  was  a  dernier  resort  to  let  it  to  Proudfoot. 

To  Mr.  Johnston — The  rent  we  pay  for  the  estate  is  over  £200  a 
year. 

When  you  put  your  cattle  on  the  mountain,  did  you  turn  any 
other  person’s  off?  Certainly  not ;  there  was  more  grass  there, 
and  enough  for  all. 

Mr.  Heron— As  between  you  and  the  company,  did  you  put  on 
as  many  cattle  as  you  like  ?  1  have  not  been  restricted , 

John  Proudfoot  examined  by  Serjeant  Dowse — 1  am  the  manager 
of  this  estate ;  I  am  there  two  years  and  more ;  I  was  not 
acquainted  with  the  property  before  I  wrent  there  as  agent. 

Had  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  entered  into  the  agreement  for  putting  the 
cattle  on  the  mountain  ?  I  don’t  know  ;  the  mountain  was  a  com¬ 
mon  before  he  put  his  cattle  there,  and  everybody  grazed  on  it ; 
Mr.  Brett,  the  engineer,  marked  out  some  portions  ;  I  believe  that 
the  tenant  Linskey  pointed  out  a  boundary  to  me  between  the 
mountain  ;  in  consequence  of  a  suggestion  I  made,  the  portion  for 
the  tenants  was  increased,  and  that  left  was  more  than  enough  for 
their  purposes. 

Did  the  tenants  agree  ?  When  I  went  there  they  told  me  it  was 
worth  nothing,  and  they  asked  me  to  fence  it  for  them  ;  there  was 
enough  for  the  whole  of  them ;  but  the  arrangement  was  not 
carried  out,  and  the  tenants  had  still  the  use  of  the  mountain  ; 
M  Cullagh  had  cattle  there  at  the  time  the  letters  were  published, 
but  there  was  more  grass  there  while  his  cattle  was  on  it  than  the 
tenants  or  others  could  use ;  I  told  the  tenants  to  fence  some 
portion  of  the  land,  and  they  did  it ;  that  gave  employment,  and 
the  tenants  were  paid  for  it. 

Was  there  ever  any  interference  on  your  part  or  M  ‘Cullagh’s  to 
prevent  the  tenants  grazing  over  the  mountain  ?  Certainly  not ; 
they  were  grazing  on  the  mountain  still ;  there  was  a  tenant,  a 
herd,  who  keeps  off  trespassers ;  I  never  heard  of  any  complaint 
being  made  till  the  school  \vas  being  built  by  the  company  ;  I 
never  knew  of  any  land  being  taken  from  the  tenants  ;  I  never 
took  turf  from  them ;  I  collected  the  rents ;  the  bailiff  served 
the  notices  to  quit,  and  it  was  done  by  the  company.  Linskey 
made  a  claim  for  surveying,  but  I  had  nothing  to  say  to  that.  I 
did  not  authorize  Linskey  to  sue  any  of  the  tenants.  1867  was 


41G 


APPENDIX. 


a  hard  37ear,  and  seven  tons  of  meal  were  given  to  the  tenants 
by  the  company  ;  the  company  mulcted  me  in  what  they  charged 
me  for  the  house  and  demesne.  I  know  Philip  Henehan  ;  there 
was  a  distress  levied  on  that  man  by  my  orders,  and  I  seized  this 
man’s  cow,  but  I  did  so  because  I  was  told  this  man  was  about 
going  to  America.  The  bailiff's  name  is  John  Naughton  ;  the 
cow  was  worth  £7  or  £8,  and  the  rent  was  £3  or  £4 ;  the  distress 
was  issued  because  I  understood  he  was  about  to  run  off  to 
America ;  the  cow,  though  seized,  was  not  removed ;  after  I 
seized  the  cow  he  offered  me  half  a  year’s  rent ;  he  did  not  offer 
that  until  the  cow  was  seized  ;  if  he  would  give  up  the  place  I 
would  have  let  him  off  altogether.  The  tenants,  I  swear,  were 
never  deprived  of  the  mountain  outlet. 

How  many  civil  bill  processes  were  issued  on  the  2nd  November, 
for  rent  due  on  the  1st  ?  Seven  or  eight ;  I  could  not  get  the 
rent  from  them  ;  those  people  were  not  evicted  ;  they  owed  £2 
and  £2  10s.,  which  they  would  not  pay;  they  had  to  pay  law 
costs  also  ;  there  was  one  ejectment  in  the  Queen’s  Bench,  but  no 
judgment  was  marked  on  it ;  there  were  some  of  the  ejectments 
never  proceeded  with  ;  a  good  many  of  the  ejectments  were  never 
proceeded  with  ;  I  never  knew  anything  to  be  done  with  the 
tenants  except  for  their  good  ;  if  they  were  left  alone  they  would 
be  all  right ;  I  deny  that  the  rents  were  raised  40,  50,  and  00 
per  cent. ;  it  is  not  raised  yet,  but  it  will  be  raised ;  my  sheep  do 
not  eat  any  grass  belonging  to  the  tenants ;  they  eat  grass  for 
which  I  have  to  pay. 

Serjeant  Dowse. — And  they  have  a  right  to  eat  it,  and  you 
have  a  right  to  eat  them  in  return.  (Laughter.) 

[The  learned  counsel  here  read  the  letters  published  in  the 
Irish  Times  by  witness,  in  refutation  of  the  letter  of  the  Bev. 
Mr.  Lavelle.]  That  is  my  letter.  [Counsel  also  read  some 
remarks  from  the  leading  columns  of  the  Irish  Times  on  the 
subject  of  the  difference  between  the  company  and  the  tenants. 
He  also  read  the  Bev.  Mr.  Lavelle’s  letter,  headed  “How  to 
evict  without  serving  notice  to  quit.”  Witness  was  asked  as  to 
the  statements  contained  in  that  letter,  and  he  denied  that  they 
were  accurate  ;  the  tenants  were  asked  to  pay  the  surveyor ;  the 
company  paid  him. 

Did  you  demand  anything  for  the  surveyor’s  fee  ?  No. 

Did  you  threaten  to  distrain  them  ?  No,  but  in  reference  to 
the  striping,  I  said  I  would  put  the  cows  off  the  land  if  the 
tenants  did  not  consent  to  resign  their  old  holdings. 

Did  Linskey  offer  the  rent  at  all  ?  No,  I  offered  to  let  him  off 
if  he  gave  me  the  place  over. 

Was  that  season  a  bad  one  ?  Not  more  so  than  many  others. 

Are  the  statements  in  your  own  letter  true  ?  I  don’t  know 
what  you  mean.  - ' 

The  letter  to  the  Irish  Times?  Yes,  the  woman  was  beaten. 

T  am  not  asking  you  about  the  woman.  Were  the  statements 
true  ?  Yes,  the  woman  was  beaten. 


APPENDIX. 


417 


That  is  not  what  I  am  asking  about  at  all.  Father  Lavelle 
says  that  the  statements  in  your  letter  are  flagrant  untruths.  As 
far  as  you  know  are  the  statements  in  your  letter  to  the  Irish 
Times  true  ?  I  believe  them  to  be  true. 

Did  you  read  the  letter  of  the  27th  January,  in  which  he 
makes  the  calculation  ?  I  did. 

Did  you  investigate  the  figures  ?  No. 

Did  you  take  away  any  waste  land  ?  No  ;  the  tenants  at 
Shrah  were  not  deprived  of  any  land  either ;  the  company 
drained  the  lands  there  ;  at  Derrew  I  am  building  walls,  and 
arrangements  have  been  made  with  the  tenants  to  build  houses 
there  ;  the  company  brought  down  the  materials,  but  the  tenants 
wrould  build  the  houses  if  the  materials  had  not  been  sent  down 
itself  ;  everyone  there  has  two  cows. 

Did  you  issue  a  ukase  for  the  tenants  to  go  ?  No. 

Did  you  see  “  iron  eating  into  their  souls?” — (laughter)  No. 

Is  there  any  transaction  about  Widow  Gibbons  but  the  one 
which  you  have  contradicted  ?  Not  that  I  am  aware  of.  It  is  stated 
that  she  got  a  notice  to  quit  last  year  for  a  year’s  rent,  and  that 
all  promises  were  broken  with  her  ?  She  owred  a  year’s  rent,  and 
a  man  wanted  to  take  land  from  her,  as  conacre,  if  I  would  gua¬ 
rantee  not  to  come  on  him  for  the  rent. 

The  Chief  Justice  :  Was  there  a  process  issued  ?  Yes. 

Did  you  say  you  would  not  issue  a  process  ?  I  did,  and  did 
not  do  so  until  the  last  moment. 

Was  there  any  I  0  U  taken  ?  No. 

Was  there  an  I  0  U  for  6s.  for  the  surveyor  taken  ?  I  know 
nothing  about  that  at  all ;  the  tenants  knew  they  would  not  be 
turned  out,  that  we  only  wanted  to  stripe  the  land  ;  they  were 
dependent  entirely  on  what  the  company  would  do ;  all  the 
parties  who  signed  the  agreement  to  leave  their  land  were  to  get 
new  stripes. 

To  a  j  uror  :  A.  great  number  of  the  tenants  have  entered  into 
the  new  stripes. 

The  Chief  Justice:  What  is  the  new  rent  to  be?  It  is  not 
fixed  yet. 

To  Serjeant  Dowse  :  Some  of  the  tenants  would  not  sign  any 
of  the  agreements,  and  they  have  not  gone  in  on  the  new  stripes; 
many  of  them  signed  an  agreement  that  they  would  pay  an  increased 
rent.  (A  number  of  agreements  were  here  produced  )  Those  who 
did  not  agree  remained  as  they  were  before. 

Mr.  Falkiner,  Q.C.  :  The  result  of  the  system  is  that  every 
tenant  who  would  not  sign  the  agreement  would  go  out  on  a 
certain  day. 

Serjeant  Dowse  :  Those  who  have  not  agreed  to  sign  these 
are  still  in  possession  ?  Yes. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.  :  Most  of  those  people  speak 
Irish  ;  it  is  the  old  rent  they  are  at  present  paying  ;  1  know  James 
Philbin  ;  he  is  a  marksman. 

The  Chief  Justice  :  Is  Philbin  a  specimen  case  •  2d 


418 


APPENDIX. 


Mr.  Heron :  Yes,  my  lord ;  a  specimen  of  the  history  of  an 
unfortunate  Irish  tenant. 

Examination  continued  :  Philbin  speaks  Irish  and  I  speak 
English  (laughter)  ;  he  entered  into  this  agreement  by  which  he 
agreed  to  forfeit  £10  for  every  lodger  he  tool:  in.  (Great  laughter.) 

Was  that  explained  to  Philbin  in  Irish  ?  I  cannot  tell  you  the 
precise  circumstances  of  that ;  there  was  an  explanation  given  to 
them  of  what  they  were  signing. 

The  new  rent  as  to  Philbin  was  to  be  over  £8,  his  old  rent 
being  only  £3,  yet  he  signed  the  agreement  ?  There  must  be  some 
mistake  as  to  that. 

Mr.  Heron  :  Do  you  think  so  ?  It  is  a  comical  agreement. 

Witness :  Some  of  those  agreements  were  signed  by  the 
company,  and  by  Mr.  M'Cullagh,  as  chairman  of  the  company; 
the  tenants  who  signed  the  documents  are  on  the  new  stripes. 

Did  you  ever  give  the  tenants  any  document  or  copy  of  those 
documents  ?  No. 

The  Chief  Justice  :  What  tenure  have  those  people  now  of 
their  holdings  ?  They  are  there,  my  lord,  and  they  have  signed 
an  agreement  to  pay  the  new  rent. 

The  Chief  Justice  :  To  make  a  man  sign  an  agreement  at  a 
particular  rent  and  to  say  the  company  did  not  intend  to  take  that 
rent  is  quite  ridiculous. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.  :  Indeed  it  is,  my  lord.  (To  witness) — Did 
you  not  compel  those  poor  people  to  give  I  0  Us  for  small 
sums?  Yes;  I  pledge  my  oath  what  land  Mr.  M'Cullagh  has 
there  is  not  worth  £5  a-year. 

Don’t  you  know  that  Judge  Fitzgerald  certified  in  the  case  at 
Galway  against  you  for  costs  ? 

Serjeant  Dowse  :  You  must  produce  the  certificate. 

Mr.  Heron  :  Here  it  is  (produced). 

Witness:  He  certified  for  costs,  but  I  have  not  yet  paid  the 
costs ;  the  tenants’  old  turbai’y  has  not  been  taken  from  them. 

The  Lord  Chief  Justice  asked  Mr.  Proudfoot  were  the  rents  on 
the  estate  usually  paid  punctually  ? 

Mr.  Proudfoot  replied  in  the  affirmative. 

Mr.  Henry  Brett  was  then  examined  by  Serjeant  Dowse  as 
follows: — I  am  surveyor  for  the  county  of  Wicklow;  I  was  for¬ 
merly  surveyor  for  Mayo  ;  I  knew  the  Port  Loyal  estate  ;  I  went 
over  the  property  to  inspect  it. 

The  company  left  it  in  your  hands  to  stripe  the  lands  ?  Yes. 

W as  there  any  of  the  land  held  on  the  Itundale  system  ?  A  large 
portion  of  it. 

Is  that  a  convenient  mode  of  tenure  ?  I  conceive  it  is  injurious 
to  the  tenant,  and  one  that  would  deteriorate  the  land.  I  con¬ 
sidered  it  best  for  the  interest  of  the  tenant,  and  necessary  for 
the  land,  to  stripe  it,  and  make  each  holding  a  complete  one. 

Did  you  intimate  your  intention  to  the  tenants  ? — I  did  ;  and 
there  was  no  dissent,  and  I  thought  them  all  satisfied  with  the 
arrangements. 


APPENDIX. 


419 


Did  you  hear  any  dissentients  at  all  ?  Not  a  word  ;  the  tenants 
were  all  willing  to  surrender  their  holdings  for  the  purpose  of  hav¬ 
ing  them  striped. 

To  the  Lord  Chief  Justice — The  holdings  are  ranged  from  one 
to  ten  acres  ;  there  were  other  larger  holdings,  hut  all  did  not  hold 
under  the  Kundale  system ;  I  conveyed  myself  to  the  tenants  both 
in  English  and  Irish. 

What  condition  was  the  land  in  when  you  became  acquainted 
with  it  ?  It  had  deteriorated  considerably  towards  what  it  was 
when  I  knew  it  fifteen  years  before,  and  I  made  plans  for  improve¬ 
ments  which  were  beneficial  for  the  tenants  as  much  as  the  land¬ 
lord  ;  the  plan  consisted  of  draining,  dealing  out,  and  building 
houses,  and  my  estimate  was  about  £3,000. 

How  much  of  that  was  spent  ?  About  £2,000,  and  the  rest  is 
in  course  of  being  expended. 

How  much  of  the  estate  is  good  arable  land?  About  1,000 
acres. 

Was  this  land  improved  by  the  works  you  mention?  Yes,  and 
it  was  distributed  among  the  tenants  when  improved. 

How  many  tenants  were  there  ?  One  hundred  and  ten. 

Did  you  find  the  rents  unequal  ?  Yes,  and  it  was  on  my  advice 
and  calculation  the  company  adopted  the  increased  rent,  with 
which,  as  far  as  I  know,  the  tenants  seemed  to  be  satisfied. 

What  is  Griffith’s  valuation  ?  Something  about  £840. 

What  were  the  existing  rents  when  you  arrived  ?  £980,  and 
they  were  unequal. 

Did  you  recommend  the  company  to  make  an  increase  ?  I  did, 
on  the  basis  of  expenditure  by  the  company,  so  as  to  give  an  in¬ 
terest  for  the  outlay. 

What  was  the  increase  of  rent  calculated  on  a  fair  per-centage 
on  the  outlay?  About  £200  on  the  £3,000  outlay,  or  £200  or 
£300  above  the  rents  on  the  land  as  I  found  them,  and  that  is  the 
increased  rent  we  have  heard  about. 

In  your  judgment  is  that  a  fair  rent  for  the  estate  ?  I  think  it 
is  a  moderate  rent ;  it  includes  about  150  and  200  acres  of  land, 
some  of  which  never  paid  rent  before. 

You  heard  Mr.  Proudfoot  say  yesterday  that  they  pay  rent  now 
for  land  that  they  never  had  before.  Is  that  true  ?  It  is. 

In  this  allocation  of  land  did  you  try  as  far  as  you  could  to  give 
the  tenants  the  land  they  had  before  ?  I  did. 

Were  your  directions  for  that  carried  out  ?  I  believe  they  were, 
and  I  found  no  favoritism  any  place ;  wherever  I  heard  com¬ 
plaints  from  the  tenants  I  investigated  them  ;  the  mountain 
top  of  Derassa  is  frcm  1,500  to  1,800  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea. 

Is  the  plateau  of  land  from  which  this  mountain  springs  above 
the  level  of  the  sea  ?  It  is. 

Is  the  mountain  grass  to  the  summit  ?  It  is  ;  but  only  the  sides 
of  the  mountain  facing  east  and  north  belong  to  the  company. 

Was  there  any  division  between  the  estates  ?  Nothing  but  an 
ideal  line. 


420 


APPENDIX. 


When  you  went  there  how  did  you  find  the  Port  Royal  portion 
used?  I  found  the  tenants  had  not  sufficient  stock  to  occupy  the 
lands,  and  the  mountain  was  used  as  a  commonage  by  the  people 
for  several  miles  around  ;  I  was  told  that  that  was  so. 

To  Mr.  Heron — I  was  told  it  on  the  land. 

Serjeant  Dowse — Did  you  recommend  the  company  to  fence  the 
mountain  and  mark  off  a  portion  for  the  tenants?  Yes  ;  in  ’06  I 
recommended,  and  in  ’67  1  had  the  marking-off  done ;  there  were 
about  1,500  acres  left  for  ten  tenants  to  graze  their  stock  on,  and 
I  considered  that  more  than  ample  for  the  tenants  of  Derassa. 

Did  any  of  the  Derassa  tenants  complain  to  you  of  other  people 
grazing  cattle  on  the  mountain  ?  The  complaint  was  that  they 
had  not  enough  of  cattle  themselves,  and  that  as  other  people 
used  to  graze  cattle  on  the  mountain  it  was  useless  to  them. 

In  consequence  of  anything  Mr.  Proudfoot  told  you,  did  you 
increase  the  allowance  of  land  for  the  Derassa  tenants  afterwards  ? 
I  did. 

A.ud  did  you  fence  between  the  Port  Royal  estate  and  Mr. 
George  Henry  Moore’s  estate  ?  I  did  ;  and  the  effect  of  that 
fencing  was  to  greatly  increase  the  value  of  the  land  to  the 
tenants. 

To  the  Chief  Justice— There  are  15  tenants  at  Derassa,  and  IS 
at  Shrah. 

Serjeant  Dowse — Was  there  sufficient  grazing  for  all  the  cattle 
you  saw  there  ?  There  was  and  more ;  I  don’t  think  20  kyloes 
put  on  the  mountain  would  injure  the  grazing  for  the  tenants, 
because  the  mountain  was  a  very  large  tract,  and  gave  more  than 
enough  for  the  tenants. 

In  consequence  of  the  draining,  were  the  lands  of  Derrew  in¬ 
creased  in  value?  O  yes,  very  much. 

Have  you  ever  been  there  in  the  wet  weather  in  the  winter  ?  1 
have. 

Did  you  see  any  improvement  there  towards  what  it  used  to  be  ? 
In  winter  it  was  covered  with  water  before,  and  last  winter  I  saw 
cattle  grazing  there  ;  new  houses  have  been  built,  gome  by  the 
tenants  and  some  by  the  company. 

The  Chief  Justice — Have  they  any  agreements  for  leases  ?  They 
have  a  sort  of  tacit  agreement,  and  if  they  have  not  leases  I  think 
them  fairly  entitled  to  them. 

Mr.  Dowse— They  have  as  good  tenure  as  they  have  in  Ulster. 

Mr.  Heron — Oh,  do  you  say  that  ? 

Chief  Justice — I  have  some  doubts  about  that,  Serjeant. 

Serjeant  Dowse — In  point  of  law  they  have. 

The  Chief  Justice— Oh  ! 

Cross-examiued  by  Mr.  Heron — I  don’t  know  of  my  own 
knowledge  that  there  was  great  distress  in  that  part  of  the  country, 
but  I  believe  that  there  was  the  usual  periodical  distress  there  ; 
I  know  there  is  much  more  distress  in  that  part  of  the  country  than 
in  any  other  part  of  Ireland . 

How  many  houses  have  the  company  built  ?  Five,  I  think,  but 
the  arrangement  is  for  ten. 


APPENDIX. 


421 


At  how  much  a  piece  ?  £5 0. 

And  how  much  has  been  spent  on  the  demesne  for  Proudfoot  ? 
That  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  the  company’s  expendit\ire. 

But  how  much  was  spent  ?  About  £300. 

How  much,  now  tell  me,  is  the  new  rent?  £1,192  8s.  Od. 

How  many  tenants  signed  the  agreement  ?  From  80  to  90. 

What  is  Griffith’s  valuation  for  Derrew?  £50  2s.  7d. 

And  what  was  the  old  rent  there  in  ’66  ?  £71  Is.  3d. 

Now,  what  is  the  new  rent  ?  £134  13s.  7d. 

'  How  much,  now,  is  Derrew  let  at  over  the  townland  valuation  ? 
The  townland  valuation  was  never  intended  as  a  criterion. 

Is  it  100  per  cent,  over  Griffith’s  valuation  ?  It  is. 

What  is  Griffith’s  valuation  for  Kilkyren?  £145  5s.  4d. 

What  was  the  old  rent  ?  £180  8s: 

What  is  the  present  rent?  £203. 

Is  that  30  per  cent,  over  Griffith’s  valuation  ?  Oh,  I  don’t  mind 
that  at  all.  < 

But  is  it  ?  It  is. 

Now,  what  was  the  valuation  of  Newtown  ?  £81  4s.  2d. 

What  was  the  old  rent  ?  £107. 

To  the  Chief  Justice — Griffith’s  valuation  is  the  best  we  have, 
but  it  proves  no  criterion  for  the  rent. 

And  what  are  you  taking  your  basis  of  calculation  from  ?  The 
valuation  of  1843. 

Mr.  Heron  said  he  had  the  authorized  valuation  for  the  years 
’C6  and  ’69,  by  which  the  valuation  was  £93  15s. 

Mr.  Heron — All  your  answers  were  from  the  valuation  of 
’43?  Yes. 

What  is  the  existing  rent  of  Newtown  ?  .  £128  Is.  6d. 

What  is  the  valuation  of  Cloonee  ?  £4S  3s.  5d. 

Old  rent  ?  £58  4s.  3d. 

New  rent?  £82  3s.  Id. 

Is  that  an  increase  of  over  60  per  cent.  ?  60  per  cent,  of  what  ? 

Over  the  old  rent,  and  nearly  100  over  the  valuation  ?  It’s 
about  33  per  cent. 

You  said  the  operation  of  striping  was  difficult  ?  Yes. 

And  difficult  to  please  the  tenants?  Yres. 

Did  you  hear  of  the  agreements  for  giving  up  possession,  and 
becoming  caretakers  ?  Not  till  afterwards.  I  think  I  was  con¬ 
sulted  about  the  tenants’  proposal. 

Was  there  distress  more  than  usual  in  ’67  ?  There  may  have 
been  distress,  and  I  am  satisfied  there  was. 

That  is,  there  was  more  than  in  ’66  ?  I  had  good  reason  to 
remember  it,  for  I  urged  on  the  Board  of  Works  and  the  company 
to  hurry  on  the  improvements,  in  order  to  give  employment. 

How  much  of  the  £3,000  has  been  spent  ?  About  £2,000. 

During  the  year  ’68  were  you  altogether  a  fortnight  on  the 
property  ?  Oh,  no,  I  was  not.  I  used  usually  to  go  down  for  a 
day  or  two,  and  sometimes  for  four  days. 

Didn’t  you  tell  the  tenants  in  ’66  the  company  was  going  to 


422 


APPENDIX. 


improve  their  condition?  Certainly  I  did,  and  I  believe  the 
people  had  confidence  in  me. 

Since  you  made  that  promise,  how  many  houses  did  the  tenants 
build  ?  Several,  which  are  more  comfortable  and  superior  to  the 
old  ones ;  the  tenants  have  improved  the  land  since  then,  and 
those  who  are  willing  to  act  fairly  deserve  every  encouragement. 

Have  not  the  people  drained  and  improved  their  land  since  ’67  ? 
Yes. 

And  at  this  moment  deserve  leases  ?  They  do. 

Don’t  you  know  it  was  very  much  on  your  promises  they  made 
these  improvements  on  their  lands  and  went  to  this  expense  ?  I 
do.  I  believe  it  was  veiy  much  on  my  recommendation  and  from 
what  they  knew  of  me. 

Mr.  Edward  Henry  Carson  examined  by  Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C. — I 
think  the  property  of  Port  Boyal  has  been  greatly  improved  since 
’67,  and  I  form  that  opinion  from  the  condition  of  the  tenants  and 
the  laud  itself ;  the  land  has  been  drained,  boundary  walls  erected, 
houses  built,  and  the  river  lowered  about  five  or  six  feet. 

The  witness  was  not  cross-examined. 

Wm,  Joyce  examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — I  am  a  tenant  to  the 
company  on  the  Kilkyren  estate  ;  I  don’t  know  how  many  acres 
I  have  between  good  and  bad  ;  when  the  company  got  possession 
of  the  land  I  paid  £15  5s.  6d.;  I  pay  now  £16  16s.  6d. ;  I  have  not 
been  asked  for  that  increased  rent  yet,  nor  have  1  paid  the  May 
rent  yet. 

Mr.  Butt  said  that  all  these  rents  were  from  1st  of  November, 
and  fell  due  in  May,  so  that  they  were  not  paid  yet. 

Examination  continued — When  the  company  got  possession  I 
had  pasturage,  which  was  all  a  common,  on  parts  of  the  lands  of 
Kilkyren ;  the  land  was  in  common  with  others,  and  contained 
about  80  acres  ;  I  sent  two  cows,  and  some  time  of  the  year  a 
horse  to  graze  there. 

How  had  you  that  right  of  pasturage  ?  I  don’t  know,  but  I 
used  to  send  them  there. 

To  the  Chief  Justice — I  lived  there  a  long  time  ;  my  father  be¬ 
fore  me  had  the  same  right. 

To  Mr.  Butt — About  9  acres  of  that  common  are  now  fenced 
off  and  given  to  another  man  who  is  joined  with  me,  and  no  one  else 
can  put  their  cattle  on  it ;  twelve  tenants  used  to  graze  on  the 
eighty  acres ;  I  have  more  satisfaction  now  from  the  nine  acres 
than  the  right  of  grazing,  because  I  have  it  all  to  myself ;  I  know 
I  am  better  off,  and  I  would  pay  as  much  for  it  as  for  the  right  of 
graziug. 

Was  there  any  other  change  made  on  those  lands  but  that? 
No. 

Since  the  company  got  possession  of  the  lands  there  was  distress, 
and  employment  .was  given  to  the  tenants  by  Mr.  Proudfoot,  and 
they  were  paid  accordingly  as  they  liked  to  work. 

Do  you  think  you  are  as  well  off  now  as  you  were  before  ? 
I  am. 


APPENDIX. 


423 


Did  any  one  object  to  that  striping  off?  No  one  that  I  know 
of. 

Father  Lavelle  is  your  parish  priest  ?  Yes. 

Were  cattle  driven  in  on  you  about  a  month  ago  ?  There 
were. 

By  whom  ? 

Mr.  Heron  objected  to  the  question  as  not  being  pertinent  to  the 
issue.  • 

The  Lord  Chief  Justice  considered  the  objection  good. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Kaye,  LL.D. — A  man  named  Gronellis 
joined  with  me. 

Are  not  these  9  acres  the  pick  of  the  common  ?  These  are  good, 
but  they  are  not  the  best. 

If  you  had  your  choice  now,  are  not  they  the  very  ones  you 
would  take  ?  They  are  not. 

Had  you  to  pay  any  costs  at  all  ?  I  had. 

How  much  had  you  to  pay  ?  I  paid  no  costs  yet. 

How  much  are  you  to  pay  ?  I  don’t  know ;  I  was  not  told. 

Were  you  served  with  a  process  ?  I  was. 

Had  you  to  pay  costs  on  that  ?  I  had. 

When  were  you  served  ?  In  November. 

For  the  rent  that  was  due  on  that  very  November?  Yes. 

And  how  much  costs  had  you  to  pay  on  that  ?  I  think  it  was 
14s.  Sd. 

Mr.  Heron  read  the  proposal  which  was  dated  26th  of  Novem¬ 
ber,  and  said  he  was  exempted  from  the  fine  for  lodgers,  but  was 
liable  to  a  fine  of  £10  if  he  kept  any  cattle  or  fowl  in  the  house. 
(A  laugh. ) 

The  Chief  Justice — But  they  will  get  in,  nevertheless.  (Laugh¬ 
ter.) 

Cross-examination  continued — I  signed  two  other  papers  before 
that.  I  heard  that  I  was  to  pay  fees  for  being  put  into  the  new 
possession. 

You  paid  the  last  November  rent?  I  did. 

When  ?  In  November. 

Was  it  Mr.  Proudfoot  put  you  into  possession  of  this  new  stripe? 
Yes. 

The  Chief  Justice — Do  you  expect  to  get  a  lease  ?  Well,  I  was 
told  I  would. 

Who  told  you  ?  Mr.  Proudfoot. 

Mr.  Kaye — When  ?  About  two  months  ago. 

Mr.  Heron — Ha  !  You  may  go  down. 

Mr.  Heron,  during  the  examination  of  witnesses,  read  the  follow¬ 
ing  curious  agreements  between  the  tenants  and  the  company  : — 

“Memorandum  of  agreement  entered  into  tl^is  28th  day  of 
April,  1868,  between  Andrew  M‘Cullagh,  Esq.,  of  34  Lower 
Abbey-street,  in  the  city  of  Dublin,  merchant,  on  the  one  part,  and 
James  Pliilbin,  jun. ,  of  Clonee,  on  the  other  part : 

“The  said  Andrew  M‘Cullagh  agrees  to  let,  and  said  James 


424 


APPENDIX. 


Philbin,  jun.,  agrees  to  take  the  house  and  that  part  of  the  lands 
of  Clonee  as  now  in  his  possession,  situate  in  the  barony  of  Carra, 
and  county  of  Mayo,  for  the  term  of  one  year,  commencing  from 
the  first  day  of  November,  1S67,  and  ending  the  first  day  of  No¬ 
vember,  18(38,  at  and  for  the  rent  or  sum  of  £1  19s.  Od.  sterling, 
for  the  use  and  occupation  of  said  house  and  lands  for  said  period, 
same  to  be  paid  in  two  equal  payments  on  the  1st  May  next  and 
1st  November  following ;  the  tenancy  to  cease  on  the  1st  day  of 
November,  1808. 

“  Andrew  M‘Cullagh. 
his 

“James  X  Philbin. 
mark. 

“Witness  present — Martin  Henaghan.” 

“  13th  day  of  November,  1SC8. 

“  Sir, — T  have  this  day  given  you  up  the  quiet  and  peaceable 
possession  of  the  house  and  land  of  Clonee,  in  the  parish  of  Bally- 
oney,  barony  of  Carra,  and  county  of  Mayo,  which  I  held  as 
tenant  from  year  to  year  to  you,  and  you  have  kindly  allowed  me 
into  said  house  and  lands  for  a  short  period  as  caretaker,  and  I 
undertake  to  give  you  up  said  house  and  land  at  any  time  you  ask 
for  same  without  any  trouble  or  expense. — I  remain,  sir,  your 
obedient  servant, 

“  James  Philbin. 

“To  Andrew  M'Cullagh. 

“John  Naughton, 

“Witness  present  when  truly  read  and  explained.” 

“tenant's  proposal. 

“To  Andrew  M'Cullagh,  Esq..  34,  Lower  Abbey-street,  in  the 

city  of  Dublin,  merchant. 

“  I  propose  to  take  and  become  tenant  to  you  of  all  that  and  those 
the  lands  of  Clonee  and  Port  Iloyal  estate  known  as  Stripe  No. 
13,  containing  in  or  about  3f  acres  or  thereabouts,  with  the  house 
and  offices  thereon,  as  tenant  from  year  to  year,  and  to  pay  for 
same  the  yearly  rent  a  sum  of  £3  lGs.  10d.,  payable  half  yearly, 
on  every  first  day  of  May  and  first  day  of  November  in  each  year. 
Tenancy  to  commence  from  first  day  of  November,  18G8,  I  to  pay 
the  usual  taxes  as  between  landlord  and  tenant.  And  I  hereby 
agree  and  undertake  to  keep  in  constant  and  proper  repair  and 
condition  all  the  houses  and  fences  on  said  lands,  and  all  drains 
thereon  ;  and  to  give  up  all  said  houses,  fences,  and  drains,  at  any 
time  I  shall  have  to  yield  up  said  holding,  in  proper  and  tenantable 
repair  and  condition.  And  I  agree  to  whitewash  with  lime  the 
house  and  offices  on  said  holding  twice  in  each  year,  and  that  I 
shall  not  keep  or  house  in  the  dwellinghouse  on  said  holding,  any 
cattle  or  fowl  whatever,  and  further  that  I  shall  pull  and  destroy 
all  weeds  that  may  grow  upon  said  lands.  And  I  further  agree 


APPENDIX. 


425 


and  undertake  that,  during  my  tenancy,  I  shall  cause  the  fodder  to  be 
consumed  by  cattle  or  otherwise  upon  some  part  or  parts  of  my 
lands,  and  that  I  shall  not  sell  or  dispose  of  any  of  same,  and  also 
that  1  shall  not  nor  will  not  take  more  than  one  white  crop  off  said 
lands  without  following  same  with  a  green  crop  of  some  kind  or 
description ;  and  that  I  shall  put  into  and  upon  each  acre  of  said 
lands  not  less  than  50  barrels  of  lime  per  acre  once  in  every  three 
years  during  my  tenancy.  And  also  that  I  will  not  conacre  or 
sublet  any  of  said  holding  during  my  tenancy,  nor  shall  I  take  or 
permit  to  be  taken  in  any  lodgers  to  my  said  house,  nor  shall  I 
dig  for  or  raise  fior  permit  or  suffer  to  be  raised  any  bogwood  of 
any  kind  or  description,  or  cut  or  permit  or  suffer  to  be  cut  any 
turf  on  said  lands  for  the  purposes  of  sale,  without  the  written 
permission  of  my  said  landlord  or  his  agent,  nor  shall  I  cut  or  per¬ 
mit  or  suffer  to  be  cut  any  timber  growing  or  to  be  grown  on  my 
said  holding.  And  I  further  agree  that  in  case  I  shall  break  or 
neglect  any  of  the  aforesaid  covenants,  I  shall  forfeit  and  pay  a 
sum  of  £10  for  each  of  said  covenants  so  broken  or  neglected  as 
aforesaid,  said  sum  to  be  recovered  as  rent ,  and  subject  to  all  pro¬ 
ceedings  for  recovery  thereof,  as  by  law  refers  to  the  recovery  of 
rent  in  arrear. 

“  Dated  this  16th  day  of  February,  1869. 

his 

“  Jas.  ><!  Philbin,  jun.,  Clonee. 
mark 

“  Witness  present — John  D.  Proudfoot.” 

James  Malone  examined  by  Mr.  Gibson — I  hold  £2  worth  of 
land  belonging  to  the  company  on  the  Port  Poyal  estate  at 
Derassa;  I  know  the  mountain  there;  there  are  some  cattle  grazing 
there,  and  the  mountain  would  graze  more  ;  I  have  seen  more 
cattle  grazing  there  than  now. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Falkiner — Do  you  know  what  a  £10 
lodger  is? 

The  witness  said  he  did  not  understand. 

Have  you  your  agreement?  No  answer. 

Document  handed  to  witness. 

Can  you  read  that  ? 

Witness — I  could  not  read  the  cris  crosses.  (Great  laughter.) 
I  have  the  same  land  as  before. 

Do  you  know  what  an  agreement  is  ?  I  don’t  know  to  tell  you 
in  English  ;  you  are  too  clever  for  me. 

His  lordship — How  much  rent  are  you  to  pay  ?  £2  every  year. 

Mr.  Falkiner — Did  you  ever  put  your  cross  to  any  paper  ?  Do 
you  know  what  rent  you  are  to  pay?  I  have  the  same  rent  as 
before. 

Mr.  Falkiner — Listen  to  this  :  “I  propose  to  take  and  become 
tenant  to  you  of  all  that  and  those  the  lands  of  Derassa  on  the 
Port  Poyal  estate  known  as  Stripe  No.  4,  containing  about  124 
acres,  with  the  house  and  offices  thereon,  and  pay  fur  same  the 


426 


APPENDIX. 


yearly  rent  of  £4  6s.  7d.”  Did  you  ever  liear  of  that  before? 
That  is  Irish ;  is  it  ?  No  answer. 

To  Mr.  Duffi.il — I  have  the  same  land  as  before  I  signed  that 
agreement ;  I  have  not  got  my  new  stripe  yet,  so  that  I  have  not 
yet  paid  the  new  rent. 

John  Naughton  examined  by  Mr.  Butt — I  am  bailiff  on  the 
estate,  and  was  bailiff  over  it  before  the  company  got  it,  under  the 
Court  of  Chancery,  Mr.  Kenny  being  the  receiver  ;  I  know  a  man 
named  Henaghan ;  about  Christmas  last  I  went  with  Mr.  Proud- 
foot  to  his  residence;  Mr.  Proudfoot  demanded  the  rent,  which 
was  something  about  £3  ;  it  was  a  year’s  rent ;  Henaghan  said  he 
would  not  pay  it. 

Did  he  give  any  reason  for  not  paying  it  ?  He  said  he  was 
going  to  America  ;  he  said  nothing  about  giving  up  the  farm  ;  he 
said  he  would  leave  the  house  and  manure  which  was  in  the  stable 
for  the  value  of  the  rent ;  Mr.  Proudfoot  said  he  would  seize  his 
cow  if  he  did  not  pay  his  rent ;  Henaghan  had  a  heifer  also,  and 
I  heard  he  had  21  sheep  and  two  pigs ;  I  don’t  recollect  what  Mr. 
Proudfoot  said,  but  we  seized  on  the  cow  and  left  it  on  the  land  ; 
I  don’t  recollect  that  he  offered  to  pay  a  half-year’s  rent  before 
the  cow  was  seized ;  he  sold  the  cow  a  short  time  after  ;  Hen¬ 
aghan  had  a  small  stack  of  oats,  some  potatoes,  and  a  horse  at  the 
time  of  the  seizure. 

At  the  time  the  estate  was  in  Chancery  how  was  the  mountain 
of  Derassa  used  ?  The  cattle  from  five  miles  on  each  side  used  to 
be  driven  in  on  it  to  graze  ;  there  was  no  fence  on  it  at  that  time ; 
part  of  it  is  fenced  now  ;  at  that  time  I  think  there  was  no  hin¬ 
drance  to  any  person  putting  their  cattle  on  it,  for  there  was  no 
fence  or  mearing  ;  I  know  a  widow  of  the  name  of  Gibbons  on  the 
estate ;  I  think  the  stripes  on  the  Derassa  mountain  are  now  com¬ 
pleted.  There  is  good  grass  on  the  lower  part  near  the  arable 
land  below  the  line :  I  ordered  Widow  Gibbons  to  pay  the  rent,  and 
I  believe  she  paid  it  some  time  after ;  I  don’t  recollect  warning 
her  to  pay  the  r-ent ;  Bryan  Comisky  takes  care  of  the  mountain 
for  Mr.  M‘Cullagh. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Heron,  Q.C. — Before  the  company  came 
there,  and  before  the  stripings  were  used,  the  tenants  cut  their 
turf  wherever  they  liked,  here  or  there  ?  All  the  tenants  used  to 
cut  the  turf  except  where  there  was  conacre.  Are  you  not  try¬ 
ing  to  make  them  cut  turf  in  a  particular  place  ?  They  were  told 
to  go  into  one  bog  where  it  was  drained  ;  some  did  and  some  did 
not.  You  were  examined  at  the  Galway  assizes  ?  Yes.  On  your 
oath  did  you  not  there  swear  that  Henaghan  offered  Mr.  Proud¬ 
foot  a  half  year’s  rent,  and  it  was  refused?  (Hesitation.) 

Chief  Justice — Answer  the  question,  sir !  don’t  be  taking  up  the 
time. 

Mr.  Heron  repeated  the  question. 

Witness  :  How  refused? 

Mr.  Heron  :  Answer,  sir.  He  refused,  unless  he  got  the  year’s 
rent ;  that  was  after  the  cow  was  seized ;  the  herd  Bryan  Comisky 


APPENDIX. 


427 


■was  left  in  charge  of  the  cow  for  two  or  three  days  ;  did  not  know 
how  much  he  got ;  witness  received  the  Warrant  from  Mr.  Proud- 
foot  on  the  day  he  seized  the  cow,  St.  Stephen’s  Day,  as  he  was 
going  up  the  mountain,  but  could  not  say  at  what  hour ;  I  don’t 
know  the  quanty  of  land  I  have,  but  I  pay  £14  for  it. 

Chief  Justice — Do  you  mean  to  say,  sir,  that  you  don’t  know 
the  quantity  of  land  you  have  ?  I  do  not,  I  never  got  a  return  of 
it ;  did  not  know  whether  Proudfoot  offered  to  forgive  him  the 
rent  if  he  gave  up  the  place ;  witness  signed  an  agreement  about 
twelve  months  ago;  I  know  James  Philbiu,  jun. ;  I  was  present 
when  he  put  his  mark  to  the  agreement  (produced) ;  I  speak  Irish, 
and  I  explained  as  well  as  I  could  to  Philbiu  the  contents  of  the 
document ;  I  knew'  he  was  to  be  fined  £10  for  every  lodger  he 
took  in.  (Agreement  of  witness  with,  the  plaintiff  to  become 
tenant  for  one  year  at  a  yearly  rent  of  £14  handed  in  as 
evidence. ) 

Michael  Henely  examined  by  Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C.  :  I  am  one  ot 
the  bailiffs  on  the  Port  Boyal  estate  ;  I  knew  the  mountain  of 
Derassa  before  the  company  bought  it ;  it  was  grazed  in  common 
by  the  tenants  of  Derassa  ;  there  wTas  no  wall  or  hedge  to  prevent 
the  cattle  of  Mr.  Moore  or  Lord  Plunket  going  in  to  graze  on  it ; 
I  cannot  say  if  any  other  tenants  had  their  cattle  grazing  on  it 
but  those  of  Derassa ;  I  heard  the  tenants  frequently  complain  of 
trespassers  ;  some  people  used  to  come  and  cut  the  grass  with 
scythes  and  carry  it  away. 

To  the  Chief  Justice — I  went  to  the  mountain  prior  to  the  com¬ 
pany  taking  possession,  occasionally  as  process  server ;  I  cannot 
say  that  I  know  the  tenants  on  the  Port  Boyal  estate  except  thoSe 
of  Derassa  had  a  right  to  graze  on  the  mountain ;  I  heard  the 
tenants  of  Shrah  had. 

To  Mr.  Johnstone — I  served  about  seven  or  eight  processes  on 
the  tenants ;  in  some  townlands  there  was  only  one  process  and 
on  another  four. 

Mr.  Falkiner, — Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  Shrah  tenants  being 
prevented  from  having  the  same  rights  on  the  mountain  as  the 
Derassa  tenants  ?  I  never  did.  And  there  was  no  fence  to  pre¬ 
vent  them?  No  ;  I  w?as  the  person  served  the  tenants  with  pro¬ 
cesses  in  November,  but  they  could  not  be  tried  till  January ;  it  is 
necessary  to  serve  a  process  fifteen  clear  days  before  the  sessions. 

Bryan  Comisky,  an  Irish- speaking  witness,  examined  by  Mr. 
Butt — Mr.  Butt  having  been  sworn  as  interpreter — I  live  in  De¬ 
rassa,  and  have  been  for  about  twenty-tw'o  years. 

A  juror  (Alderman  Tarpey) — Let  the  witness  speak  up.  (Great 
laughter.) 

Alderman  Tarpey — I  will  turn  the  laugh,  perhaps,  some  other 
way.  I  understand  the  witness,  and  wish  him  to  speak  up. 

Examination  continued — The  Derassa  tenants  used  to  graze  their 
cattle  on  the  land,  but  strangers  came  in  as  trespassers ;  the  Shrah 
tenants  used  to  graze  their  cattle  there,  but  not  this  year  ;  they 
had  no  right  to  come  in. 


428 


APPENDIX. 


How  many  of  the  Shrah  people  used  to  put  their  cattle  there  ? 
The  Shrah  people  used  to  put  them  there  unknown  to  the  Derassa 
tenants  ;  I  was  continually  trying  to  keep  them  off. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Heron :  I  was  appointed  herd  of  Mr. 
Proudfoot  two  years  next  Lady  Day  ;  I  knew  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s 
part  of  the  mountain  ;  I  was  told  to  look  after  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s 
cattle,  and  keep  them  on  this  part  of  the  mountain ;  I  kept 
M‘Cullagh’s  part  of  the  mountain  free  from  stray  cattle  as  well  as 
I  could  ;  it  was  very  hard  to  do  so  ;  I  did  not  get  the  Derassa 
tenants  summoned  for  trespassing  on  the  mountain  ;  1  was  sum¬ 
moned  by  a  woman  who  told  a  lie  of  me ;  the  magistrates  fined  me 
a  pound  for  assault ;  the  woman  was  the  wife  of  Lalley,  a  Derassa 
tenant ;  she  was  coming  down  from  the  mountain,  but  was  driving 
no  cattle  ;  the  parties  had  a  dispute,  and  I  went  between  them  ; 
for  that  I  was  fined ;  my  son  assisted  me  in  herding  the  mountain  ; 
he  had  a  dog.  ' 

John  Comisky,  son  of  the  last  witness*  examined  by  Mr.  Butt, 
through  an  interpreter  :  My  father  is  a  herd  to  Mr.  M‘Cullagh; 
I  have  a  dog,  and  help  my  father  to  herd  the  mountain  ;  we  keep 
the  cattle  off  the  land  ;  see  the  cattle  and  sheep  of  the  Derassa 
tenants  on  the  mountain  ;  there  is  no  obligation  to  take  care  of  the 
tenants’  cattle  ;  I  do  nothing  to  prevent  the  tenants’  cattle  going 
over  the  mountain  ;  they  have  liberty  to  go  over  the  entire  moun¬ 
tain. 

Are  you  quite  sure  the  tenants’  cattle  have  a  right  to  go  to  the 
top  of  the  mountain?  I  am  quite  certain  they  have,  and  Mr. 
M'Cullagh  knows  it ;  we  got  no  directions  to  keep  them  off,  and 
I  have  never  seen  such  grass  on  the  mountain  before  ;  there  was  a 
little  damage  done  there. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Falkiner :  I  know  of  the  pound  of 
Bohan  ;  I  did  not  know  of  the  sheep  of  Martin  Henaghan  being 
impounded  there. 

Mr.  Butt :  Now,  my  lord,  we  close. 

Mr.  D.  C.  Heron,  Q.C.,  then  stated  the  case  on  behalf  of  the 
defendant.  He  said — May  it  please  your  lordship  and  gentlemen 
of  the  jury,  this  is  no  ordinary  trial.  Interests  are  at  stake  upon 
these  issues  here  knit  upon  the  record,  more  important  than  they 
would  seem  at  first  sight  upon  a  mere  case  of  libel  with  the  plea  of 
a  fair  comment  upon  public  proceedings,  I  cannot  disguise  from 
you  that  I  consider  this  case  as  one  of  no  ordinary  interest — as  of 
no  ordinary  importance  to  the  administration  of  justice,  to  the  lib¬ 
erty  of  the  press,  and  to  the  condition  of  the  people  of  Ireland  ;  and 
when  I  have  named  these  three  topics,  I  feel  that  I  have  named 
the  three  things  most  important  to  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  this 
country.  Gentlemen,  this  is  an  action  of  libel  brought  by  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  against  Major  Knox,  as  the  proprietor  of  the  Irish 
Times.  It  is  an  action  of  libel,  brought,  not  for  anything  that 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh  has  done  or  is  said  to  have  done  in  his  private 
capacity  as  a  gentleman  or  a  merchant.  It  is  solely  conversant 
with  these  transactions  commencing  in  18G6,  since  the  National 
Building  and  Land  Investment  Company  of  Ireland  (Limited) 


APPENDIX, 


429 


was  founded,  and  since  it  was  proposed,  as  appears  by  this 
document  I  have  before  me,  by  this  institution  (Limited)  to 
regenerate  the  country.  Gentlemen,  this  limited  company 
propose  to  have  a  capital  of  one  million  sterling.  It  has 
respectable  names  connected  with  it,  as  directors  and  bankers,  as 
solicitors  and  as  architects;  and  as  Mr.  M'Cullagh,  the  plaintiff, 
told  you  yesterday — and  I  take  the  statement  from  his  own 
lips — the  objects  of  the  company  were  partly  for  profit  and  partly 
from  patriotic  motives  ;  and  although  the  principal  motive  was  a 
motive  of  profit,  they  had  in  their  view,  so  far  as  capital,  means, 
resources,  and  ingenuity  and  ability  could  do  it,  the  establishment 
in  Ireland  Of  fixity  of  tenure.  The  laud  question  was  to  be  settled 
by  this  company — that  question  which  is  looming  in  the  future, 
and  probably  may  occupy  a  session  or  two  iu  parliament,  and  may 
settle  the  fate  of  one  or  two  ministries  before  being  finally  decided. 
The  condition  of  Ireland  question  and  the  condition  of  the  people 
of  Ireland  question  were  to  be  settled  by  the  National  Building 
and  Land  Investment  Company,  with  Mr.  Andrew  M‘Cullagh  as 
chairman.  What  the  French  Revolution  did  for  the  French 
peasantry,  establishing  them  as  proprietors  of  the  land  without 
landlords  at  all  in  most  instances  ;  what  was  done  in  Switzerland 
by  a  similar  revolution,  where  the  agricultural  tenants  pay  no 
rent ;  what  was  done  for  Prussia  by  the  great  war,  establishing 
peacefully  what  would  be  called  a  revolutionary  measure,  trans¬ 
ferring  fee- simple  from  the  nobles  to  the  agricultural  tenants  at 
fixed  fee-farm  rents — that  was  to  be  done  by  the  National  Land 
Investment  Company,  limited  as  to  capital,  Imt  with  a  philan¬ 
thropy  and  patriotism  lofty  as  the  Alps,  and  boundless  as  the 
ocean.  Yes,  what  our  statesmen  could  not  do  in  this  country — 
what  neither  John  Bright  nor  Isaac  Butt  could  do  for  Ireland, 
Andrew  M‘Cullagh  would  do.  (Laughter.)  That  is  the  way, 
gentlemen,  we  stand  with  this  matter,  and  1  am  not  relying  upon 
mere  verbal  observations  stated  during  the  progress  of  the  trial. 
I  refer  to  the  chairman’s  eloquent  address  when  dividing  the  five 
or  six  per  cent,  to  the  shareholders  :  4<  I  trust  you  will  accept  this 
account  of  our  progress,  comparatively  small,  no  doubt,  but  in  such 
adverse  times,  as  a  promise  of  future  increase  and  popularity.  I 
believe  we  shall,  in  time  to  come,  become  both  prosperous  and 
popular — popular,  because  our  foremost  aim  is  to  strike  a  blow  at 
Ireland’s  greatest,  her  almost  only  serious  grievance— insecurity 
of  tenure  ;  and  with  a  view  to  effecting  this  object  we  shall,  on 
purchasing  land,  as  in  the  present  instance,  see  how  it  can  be 
improved  consistently  with  prudence,  and  having  become  ac¬ 
quainted  with  our  tenants,  we  purpose  to  grant  leases  to  such 
as  appear  industrious  and  deserving,  and,  in  some  instances, 
possibly  selling  the  holdings  to  such  as  have  the  means  to  purchase; 
and  having  remodelled  the  estate  and  established  the  tenants  in 
security,  we  propose  to  sell  out  as  soon  as  we  can  realize  a  fair 
profit,  and  then  go  into  the  market  again.”  All  this  philanthropy 
has  an  eye  to  the  main  chance,  and  in  these  transactions,  having 
been  the  owuiers  of  Partr.y  since  1866 - 


430 


APPENDIX. 


Mr.  Butt — Port  Royal. 

Mr.  Heron — I  find  that  Port  Royal  is  the  English  translation 
of  Partree.  Partree  means  the  king’s  share,  and  Port  Royal  is 
a  sort  of  English  translation  of  the  word.  I  am  glad  that  this  has 
been  mentioned,  because  I  should  tell  you  that  there  is  a  little  bit  of 
good  land  there,  now  called  the  Port  Royal  demesne,  and  now 
held  by  Mr.  Proudfoot,  the  servant  of  the  company.  This  portion 
was  formerly  held,  because  it  was  the  king’s  share,  by  the  men 
who  had  the  power,  and  the  others  occupied  the  mountain.  This 
good  bit  of  land,  the  king’s  share,  is  now  held  by  Mr.  Proudfoot. 
The  company  became  the  owners  of  this  property  in  1866.  It  is  a  wild 
mountain  district.  I  adopt  the  description  of  it  given  here  to-day 
by  Mr.  Brett,  who  gave  his  evidence  so  creditably  before  you — 
who  tells  you  he  knows  the  country — who  tells  you  of  the  distress 
unfortunately  recurring  there  more  than  in  any  other  part  of  Ireland, 
and  that,  I  know,  means  a  great  deal  more  than  any  other  part  of 
Ireland.  He  tells  you  how  there,  year  after  year,  in  the  hard 
winter  and  the  wet  spring,  the  cattle  are  suffering  from  that  want 
of  grass  which  those  unfortunate  men,  those  tenants,  those  care¬ 
takers,  for  they  are  nothing  else,  have  been  brought  up  to  swear 
was  plenty  for  more  than  twice  the  number  of  cattle  that  were  on 
it.  They  are  in  a  poor  district,  where  there  is  not  a  single  gentle¬ 
man  residing,  nor  a  single  person  for  the  tenantry  to  appeal  to  ex¬ 
cept  their  humble  parish  priest.  Of  this  wild  mountain  district 
this  land-jobbing  company  become  the  owners  under  a  title  that 
may  be  converted  into  a  perpetuity.  They  become  owners  of  the 
land  and  absolute  disposers  of  the  lives  and  properties  of  those 
Partry  tenants.  Gentlemen,  the  management  of  this  estate  is  ar¬ 
raigned.  I  arraign  it  here.  The  question  for  you  is,  are  these 
letters  a  libel  by  Major  Knox,  the  proprietor  of  the  Irish  Times , 
here  opening  his  columns  to  both  sides,  as  I  will  show  you,  upon 
this  question,  fully,  fairly,  and  impartially — has  he  in  these  letters 
in  one  single  degree  transgressed  those  fair  and  legitimate  bounds  of 
public  criticism  upon  the  acts  of  public  men  as  regards  the  most  im¬ 
portant  question  of  the  day,  the  condition  of  Ireland  ?  These  people 
get  possession,  as  I  said,  in  1866.  Mr.  Brett,  whom  I  know  well,  and 
have  known  for  many  years  of  my  life,  was  employed  as  the  archi¬ 
tect  and  surveyor,  and  he  gave  you,  and  I  give  to  you  as  the  com¬ 
mencement  of  these  transactions,  that  affecting  stoiy,  how  that  he,  a 
Mayo  man,  in  whom  the  people  had  confidence,  and  being  employed 
as  the  trusted  servant  and  architect  of  the  company,  how  he  went 
round  amongst  the  people,  telling  them  how  the  company  came  to 
improve  their  condition  ;  how'  he  believed  that  in  the  faith  of  the 
promise  he  gave  them  they  had  built  their  15  houses  since  1866  ; 
how  they  had  improved  the  land,  drained  the  land,  fenced  it  and 
cleared  it ;  and  he  told  you  that  in  his  heart  and  conscience  he 
believed  there  were  no  more  deserving  people  in  the  world,  and 
every  one  of  them  deserved  a  lease  at  the  hands  of  this  land¬ 
jobbing  company.  I  protest  when  I  heard  that  piece  of  evidence 
I  saw  the  witness  himself  affected  by  it,  and  he  was  struggling 


APPENDIX. 


431 


with  emotion.  He  knew  that  the  people  were  wronged  ;  that  the 
people  had  built,  and  fenced,  and  drained  on  the  promise  he,  a 
Mayo  man,  had  given  them  ;  and  that  for  years  they  had  been 
kept  as  caretakers,  under  a  document  which  they  signed,  knowing 
not  what  they  were  signing,  resting  on  promises  given  them  over 
and  over  again  by  a  man  in  whom  they  had  trusted ;  and  he  felt 
himself  that  his  promise  had  been  broken  by  his  employers.  I 
have  said  that  Patrick  Lavelle  was  the  parish  priest  of  the  district. 
I  claim  for  him,  as  parish  priest,  no  liberty  of  speech,  no  right  to 
interfere — nothing  that  any  other  member  of  the  community  is 
not  entitled  to.  For  him,  as  parish  priest,  I  claim  no  privileges 
whatever,  directly  or  indirectly.  One  thing  I  claim  for  him,  one 
thing  I  claim  for  myself,  one  thing  I  claim  for  Major  Knox,  my 
client,  who  has  entrusted  his  case  to  me,  and  one  thing  I  claim 
for  every  individual  in  the  community,  and  I  say  with  Milton, 
that  “  of  all  liberties  no  liberty  is  so  great  as  to  think,  to  believe, 
to  speak,  to  utter  with  conscience.”  That  is  the  liberty  that  I 
claim — to  utter  with  conscience  what  a  man  believes  to  be  true, 
and  to  have  reason  for  that  belief.  If  I  were  to  seek  a  defini¬ 
tion  of  what  ought  to  be  privileged  in  the  law  of  libel,  I  would 
accept  the  definition  which  Milton  gives,  and  I  say  I  claim  for 
the  priest — not  because  he  is  a  priest,  but  because  he  is  a  subject 
of  the  queen,  entitled  to  the  privileges  of  this  free  country — 
I  claim  for  him  the  right  to  think,  to  speak,  and  to  utter  freely 
with  conscience.  Gentlemen,  in  this  district— this  wild  mountain, 
and  poor,  unprovided  district — as  has  been  told  you,  the  people 
are  mainly  an  Irish-speaking  population,  and  there  is  no  person 
resident  in  the  district  in  the  rank  of  any  one  educated,  or  having 
the  position  of  a  gentleman,  except,  I  presume,  the  dispensary 
doctor  or  the  clergy.  I  regret  to  say  that  iu  Mayo,  and  Clare, 
and  Galway,  the  resident  gentry  are  disappearing.  In  Mayo 
there  are  more  ruins  of  castles  than  houses  inhabited  by  resident 
gentry,  and  society  in  the  counties  I  have  mentioned  is,  in  many 
places  that  I  know,  becoming  limited  to  this  class  of  persons, 
spread  over  an  immense  district,  and  separated  from  one  another 
— namely,  the  priest,  the  rector,  the  dispensary  doctor,  and  the 
agent.  In  this  case  the  agent  is  represented  by  Mr.  Proudfoot. 
That  is  what  society  is  coming  down  to  in  the  west,  and  I  bitterly 
lament  it.  If  there  were  a  resident  proprietary  in  Mayo  it  would 
be  impossible  that  a  case  like  this  could  ever  be  brought  into 
court.  This  estate  had  been  the  property  of  the  old  family  of 
the  Gildeas,  and  with  all  the  faults  of  the  old  Irish  gentry,  they 
were  not  cruel  or  oppressors  of  their  tenantry.  They  were  never 
guilty  of  the  grievous  injustice,  proved  to  demonstration  in  the 
present  case,  of  serving  on  the  2nd  of  November  a  civil  bill 
ejectment  for  non-payment  of  rent  due  on  the  1st  day  of  the  same 
November.  There  was  upon  them  a  moral  obligation  to  act  as 
gentlemen,  as  Christians,  in  society.  If  any  man  acted  so  in  the 
management  of  his  property,  who  would  associate  with  him  ?  The 
tenantry  loved  their  old  landlords,  for  the  landlords,  on  the  whole, 


432 


Al’PENDIX. 


treated  them  well  and  fairly,  and  allowed  them,  to  a  great  extent, 
to  manage  the  land  as  they  pleased.  Mr.  Brett,  in  his  report  to 
the  company  in  18G6,  said  :  “  The  present  rental  is  £955,  and  the 
outlay  which  I  would  recommend  would  increase  the  rental  to 
at  least  £1,500  or  £1,600  per  annum.”  Hear  that,  ye  Partry 
tenants  !  before  you  are  to  be  sold  by  the  land- jobbing  company 
your  rental  will  be  increased.  As  regards  the  squaring  of  farms 
and  the  division  of  the  common,  there  might  be  differences 
of  opinion.  Of  course  a  land  surveyor  would  like  to  see  the 
estate  squared.  This  estate  was  at  one  time  one  bleak  and  barren 
mountain.  At  the  time  of  the  Down  Survey  the  rental  of  the 
Partry  estate  wTas  probably  not  worth  £40  a-year,  and  the  people 
who  remained  upon  it  built  houses,  and  increased  the  value  of  the 
land,  and  had  enabled  that  which  was  a  barren  mountain  to  sup¬ 
port  110  families,  or  650  human  beings.  This  had  all  been  accom¬ 
plished  by  the  Bundale  system,  by  which,  when  the  land  was 
almost  in  common  between  them,  any  man  taking  a  little,  fertile 
spot  or  a  little,  sheltered  spot,  only  two  or  three  perches  in  extent, 
would  fence  it  in,  clear  away  the  furze,  aud  labor  it,  and  have  a 
little  garden  of  his  own,  for  which,  in  time,  he  would  pay  the 
rent.  If  the  estate  had  been  laid  out  in  stripes  in  the  first 
instance,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  the  estate  to  have  been 
reclaimed  or  increased  in  value.  With  reference  to  the  case  of 
James  Philbin,  junior,  which  he  (Mr.  Heron)  had  designated  as  a 
year  and  a  half  in  the  history  of  the  life  of  an  Irish  tenant,  that 
man  had  a  tenancy  from  year  to  year  of  his  property,  however 
small,  from  which  he  could  not  be  evicted  without  notice  to  quit 
and  ejectment.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  represented  himself  to  be 
ignorant  of  the  management  of  this  property,  but  he  could  not 
assume  that  ignorance  now  after  the  documents  that  had  been 
proved.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  signed  every  one  of  those  memo¬ 
randa  of  agreement,  by  which  the  tenants  ceased  to  be  tenants 
from  year  to  year,  and  became  caretakers,  to  be  put  out  by  a 
magistrate  at  a  week’s  notice.  Never  in  the  landed  history  of 
this  country  did  he  hear  of  such  a  thing.  There  were  some 
portions  of  Ireland  where  that  could  not  be  done.  Did  they 
believe  that  in  Down  or  Armagh,  on  Lord  Downshire’s,  or  Lord 
Gosford’s,  or  Lord  Lurgan’s,  or  Lord  Londonderry’s  property,  or 
on  any  of  the  northern  estates  where  tenant  right  was  existing, 
that  the  tenantry  could  be  got  to  sign  such  an  agreement,  or  that 
the  whole  tenantry  of  a  vast  district  could  be  got  to  sign  an  agree¬ 
ment  to  hold  the  land  as  caretakers  ?  The  plantation  of  Ulster 
had  been  abused  of  late.  He  must  say,  with  all  its  faults,  he  was 
glad  it  had  planted  men  in  the  north  of  Ireland  who  bought  for 
themselves  and  their  descendants  principles  of  liberty  ana  inde¬ 
pendence  that  would,  in  those  districts  he  had  mentioned,  compel 
them  to  die  in  the  burning  fragments  of  their  houses  before 
putting  their  names  to  an  agreement  such  as  that  got  up  by 
Andrew  M'Cullagh.  Counsel  then  read  the  second  agreement, 
and  said  that,  under  the  direction  of  his  lordship,  he  would  tell  the 


/ 


APPENDIX.  433 

jury  that  those  transactions  were  wholly  illegal.  As  long  as  a 
man  paid  his  rent  no  agreement  to  hold  as  a  caretaker  could  stand 
for  a  moment  in  a  court  of  la,w,  and  if  they  had  prosecuted  him 
before  the  magistrates  or  brought  an  ejectment  as  caretaker,  and 
if  it  were  possible  to  find  a  magistrate  or  a  chairman  to  give 
a  decree  for  possession,  the  man  being  tenant  paying  his 
rent - 

The  Chief  Justice — They  might  do  it  before  he  did 
that. 

Mr.  Heron  said  they  might ;  but  if  it  was  brought  against  a 
tenant  paying  rent,  the  agreement  would  not  be  worth  a  straw. 
That  was  the  principle  of  notice  to  quit  in  terrorem — the  agree¬ 
ment  certain  in  terrorem  that  was  introduced  the  previous  day. 
When  they  read  that,  could  any  one  say  that  the  letter  of  Father 
La velle— describing  the  terror  in  which  the  tenants  were — the 
hangdog  look  of  the  men  going  about  the  demesne — the  look  of 
agony  in  their  faces — was  a  libel  ?  He  did  not  wonder  at  it.  By 
signing  these  documents,  they  left  themselves  completely  at  the 
mercy  of  the  new  landlord,  and  anything  they  could  do  was  in 
vain.  All,  all  was  gone.  Everything  that  was  dear  to  a  people 
— their  land,  their  life,  and  property — everything  that  made  life 
dear  to  a  man,  were  at  the  mercy  of — whom  ?  A  man  whose  name 
he  had  scarcely  mentioned  yet,  Mr.  Proudfoot,  the  witness 
examined  the  previous  day.  He  (counsel)  never  heard  of  him 
before  these  trials  ;  he  wondered  where  they  got  him.  He  had 
looked  in  Thom’s  Directory  and  could  not  find  his  name  there 
(a  laugh),  so  that  he  wondered  where  they  got  him.  He  would 
introduce  no  personality  in  this  case  ;  but  if  Mr.  Proudfoot  were 
the  plaintiff,  he  confessed  he  would  like  to  cross-examine  him  as 
to  who  he  was.  He  had  a  queer  look  in  his  eye,  and  if  he  were 
pressed,  he  was  sure  that  man  could  tell  a  whole  story.  (Renewed 
laughter.)  He  was  the  king  of  Partry  at  £30  a-year,  and  yet  said 
that  the  company  were  mulcting  him — that  what  Mr.  M'Culloch 
held  was  not  worth  £5  a-year.  Why,  300  acres  of  land  at  £30 
a-year  must  be  very  bad,  indeed,  if  it  was  not  worth  that— this 
land  that  was  described  as  being  so  luxuriant  as  to  give  grass 
to  double  the  number  of  cattle  that  could  be  put  on  it.  Why, 
this  mountain  of  Derassa,  if  the  witnesses  were  correct,  must,  in¬ 
deed,  be  a  mine  of  wealth  in  the  country. 

Mr.  Heron  said  he  claimed  for  his  client,  in  the  name  of 
Milton,  the  liberty  to  think,  to  believe,  to  speak  or  utter,  according 
to  conscience.  It  was  not  his  duty  to  try  and  prove,  and  he 
submitted  he  would  prove,  that  these  letters  did  not  violate  any 
rule  of  law,  and  that  in  these  letters,  fairly  and  fully  con¬ 
sidered  according  to  facts,  Father  Lavelle  had  written  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  and  what  no  jury  could  ever  find  to 
be  a  libel,  or  beyond  the  ordinary  rule  of  fair  comment  of  a 
public  proceeding.  He  would  not  read  any  quotations  from  the 
judgments  or  charges  of  other  judges.  He  would  be  content 
with  the  law  as  it  would  be  laid  down  by  the  Lord  Chief 

2  E 


434 


APPENDIX. 


Justice  of  Ireland.  The  first  transaction  referred  to  in  the 
letters  was  in  reference  to  the  distraining  of  Philip  Henaghan’s 
cow.  The  cow  was  distrained — that  was  true.  It  was  dis¬ 
trained  on  St.  Stephen’s  Day,  so  that  preparations  must  have 
been  actually  going  on  at  Christmas  times.  The  bailiff,  in  his 
return,  gave  an  inventory  of  the  seizure  of  a  cow  for  £3  9s.  6d.,  a 
year’s  rent ;  aud  Father  Lavel] e  wrote  his  letter  on  St.  Stephen’s 
Day.  Henaghan  then  offered  half  a  year’s  rent,  and,  he  believed, 
offered  to  quit  the  place  altogether.  Let  the  jury  remember  all 
these  tenants  were  people  steeped  to  their  lips  in  poverty,  main¬ 
taining  a  precarious  existence  on  the  bleak  side  of  a  mountain, 
part  of  which  they  reclaimed  and  made  arable  land.  He  offered 
to  leave  his  place,  which  he  had  made  habitable,  to  the  company, 
and  go  to  America  ;  but  the  distress  was  kept  on  his  cow.  Some 
quibbling  had  gone  on  the  previous  day,  as  to  whether  or  not  the 
cow  was  removed.  He  cared  not  whether  it  was  removed 
or  not — she  was  left  in  charge  of  the  bailiff  at  the  house  at  a  cost 
of  5s.  The  plaint  in  this  case  had  been  most  artfully  framed. 
From  the  mass  of 'printed  letters  they  collected  four  or  five  isolated 
passages,  and  that  part  in  reference  to  Henaghan’s  cow  was  left 
untouched  as  not  being  part  of  the  case.  It  was  the  veracity  of 
Father  Lavelle’s  letters,  and  the  right  of  Major  Knox  to  publish, 
that  were  seized  upon.  He  would  like  to  know  on  what  old  Irish 
estate  was  that  ever  done?  Was  it  ever  done  on  any  estate  but 
that  of  a  jobbing  land  company?  He  wished  that  when  these 
documents  were  made  known  to  the  public — and  he  hoped  the 
press  would  make  them  known — and  all  the  facts  were  made 
public,  some  measure  would  be  introduced  into  parliament  to 
make  it  impossible  for  a  company  of  this  description  to  own  an 
acre  of  land  in  this  country.  The  first  part  of  the  libel  was  that  the 
tenants  were  deprived  of  the  outlet  for  their  cattle  and  their  chief 
means  of  support.  This  mountain,  which  was  a  common,  was  on 
the  demesne  lands  of  Derassa,  and  adjoined  the  townland  of 
Shrah.  When  the  company  took  this  estate,  there  were  thirteen 
families  in  Derassa  and  eighteen  at  Shrah.  In  this  he  had  the 
company  in  an  amusing  dilemma.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s  excuse  for 
sending  down  the  cattle  was  to  improve  the  stock  of  the  country, 
but  the  case  attempted  that  day  was  that  the  Shrah  tenants  had 
no  right  to  graze  on  the  mountain.  He  would  produce  tenant 
after  tenant  to  show  that  they  grazed  on  it  for  the  last  fifty  years, 
under  the  Gildeas,  the  Court  of  Chancery,  and  other  landlords,  and 
their  right  was  never  interrupted.  It  was  said  that  there  was 
abundant  grass  to  feed  double  the  number  of  cattle  the  tenants 
were  able  to  put  on  it.  If  that  were  so  why  were  the  Shrah 
tenants  excluded  ?  The  Shrah  tenants  living  on  these  miserable 
lands  were  bound  to  give  up  the  privilege  of  having  pasturage  for 
a  cow  or  sheep,  and  were  to  be  content  with  this  miserable  bit  of 
land,  where,  as  every  one  knew,  on  a  mountain  farm  it  was 
essential  to  the  existence  of  a  family  to  have  a  common  to  graze  a 
cow  upon.  But  the  case  there  to-day  was  that  they  were  to  be 


APPENDIX. 


435 


excluded  from  a  right  they  had  for  fifty  years.  They  heard  what 
slipped  from  Comisky  on  that  subject.  He  (counsel)  asked  him 
in  plain  language — and  although  some  of  those  Irish-speaking 
witnesses  might  not  wish  to  speak  English,  they  knew  every  word 
that  was  said— did  he  know  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh’s  part  of  the 
mountain,  and  he  said  he  did,  and  that  he  kept  all  cattle  except 
M‘Cullagli’s  off  M  ‘Cullagh’s  part  of  the  mountain.  His  son  denied 
this,  but  he  cared  not  which  of  the  witnesses  they  believed.  It  was 
sworn  that  there  was  more  grass  there  than  the  tenants  could 
get  cattle  to  eat.  If  there  was  more  than  an  abundance  of  grass 
for  the  Derassa  people  and  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  cattle,  why,  in  the 
name  of  common  sense,  should  the  Shrah  townland  be  excluded 
from  the  common  ?  He  put  that  to  his  learned  friend  who  was  to 
reply,  but  he  was  sure  he  could  not  reply  to  it.  Why  should 
this  common  exist  ?  Because  farms  of  this  description  could  not 
exist  without  it.  The  right  of  commonage  was  given  by  landlords 
for  the  enjoyment  of  property,  and  that  existed  as  long  as 
there  was  a  house  in  Shrah,  and  was  not  to  be  destroyed  by  the 
evidence  of  the  two  Comiskys.  They  had  not  yet  discovered  who 
was  responsible  for  these  three  documents  given  in  evidence.  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  allowed  them  to  make  use  of  his  name  in  a  most 
unwarrantable  manner ;  but  in  this  transaction  of  putting  the 
cattle  on  the  mountain  he  told  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  he  acted  illegally. 
The  right  of  the  Shrah  tenants  was  disputed ;  the  rights  of  the 
Derassa  tenants  were  set  up  by  the  company,  and  they,  it  was 
said,  from  time  immemorial  grazed  on  this  mountain.  He  held 
that  that  right  of  grazing  was  incidental  to  this  poor  land,  for 
which  the  tenants  paid  rent  and  taxes,  and  he  could  tell  the 
chairman  of  the  company  that  he  was  a  trespasser,  when,  against 
the  right  of  the  tenant,  he  put  his  cattle  on  the  land.  I  asked 
-  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  was  possession  demanded  ?  No.  Were  the  cattle 
driven  on  without  notice  to  the  people  ?  Yes.  I  will  bring  before 
you,  gentlemen,  tenant  after  tenant  whose  cattle  and  sheep  were 
driven  off  the  mountain  by  Comisky — tenants  whose  cattle  were 
impounded.  I  will  prove  my  own  case  by  showing  the  system  of 
persecution  by  which  those  people  were  driven  off  the  mountain. 
Mr.  Brett,  in  his  report,  made  a  very  remarkable  statement. 
He  said  that  “  in  dividing  the  pasture  land  he  proposed  to  allocate 
to  the  tenants  a  quantity  in  proportion  to  their  holdings  of  arable. 
This  will  allow  a  large  extent  to  be  reserved  to  the  company  for 
other  purposes — say  about  500  acres  of  Irish  pasture  land,  which 
may  be  let  to  tenants  or  outsiders.”  That  is  the  land  on  the  top 
of  Derassa  mountain,  which  was  to  be  taken  from  the  tenants,  and 
taking  500  acres  off  Derassa  deprived  the  people  of  Shrah  of  the 
right  of  grazing  on  this  mountain.  Mr.  Brett  says  the  rental  is 
ultimately  to  be  raised  to  £1,600  a-year.  That  is  the  second  point 
in  the  indictment  against  the  company,  not  against  M‘Cullagh. 
What  is  the  third  matter  ?  Mr.  Brett,  who  is  an  Irishman,  and 
has  a  heart  in  his  breast,  admitted  the  distress  which  prevailed  in 
Partry.  And  in  what  part  of  the  world  has  not  that  distress  been 


426 


APPENDIX. 


famous  ?  Has  not  money  come  from  America,  from  India,  from  Aus¬ 
tralia,  and  aye,  from  JNew  Zealand,  to  relieve  the  starving  Irish  in 
the  west,  and  to  pay  rent  to  landlords  such  as  this  company  ?  Is  not 
a  large  portion  of  the  rents  paid  by  subscriptions  from  foreign  coun¬ 
tries,  while  the  Irish  are  starving  at  home  ?  Mr.  Brett  admitted  all 
the  distress.  What  is  the  next  passage  in  Father  Lavelle's  letter. 
He  says  the  spring  was  severe  ?  As  the  parish  priest  of  this  miser¬ 
able  district,  he  was  accustomed  to  see  misery,  but  he  was  not 
yet  callous  to  misery.  “The  spring  and  summer  of  1867  were  very 
tryiug  to  tenants  on  this  mountain,  so  trying  that  he  had  to 
procure  meal  for  them  on  credit  in  Castlebar.  Thus  the  May 
rent  happened  not  to  be  paid  until  November,  and  thus  on  the 
1st  November  a  year’s  rent  fell  due.”  What  follows?  Is  it  true 
there  was  distress  ?  Is  it  true  that  Father  Lavelle  pledged  his 
credit  and  got  meal  for  the  poor  people  ?  Yet  Proudfoot  uttered 
against  Father  Lavelle  the  atrocious  libel  that  the  distress  was 
fictitious — that  the  subscriptions  for  the  suffering  people  were 
uncalled  for — that  it  was  all  concoction  on  the  part  of' Father 
Lavelle  to  get  money,  which  he  improperly  applied.  That  libel 
was  certified  by  Mr.  Justice  Fitzgerald  to  be  wilful  and  malicious. 
In  the  annals  of  persecution  I  never  knew  anything  worse  than 
this  !  All  who  know  the  west  of  Ireland,  know  that  during  a  try¬ 
ing  season  the  people  and  the  cattle  are  almost  starving.  Yet,  in 
this  state  of  things,  what  is  the  course  adopted  towards  them  ?  A 
year’s  rent  falls  due  on  the  1st  November,  and  I  ask  was  it  ever 
before  proved  in  a  court  of  justice,  that  before  the  rent  was 
demanded  a  process  is  prepared,  and  given  to  the  process-server 
on  the  morning  after  the  day  when  the  rent  could  be  legally 
demanded?  On  the  morning  of  the  2nd  the  process-server  serves 
the  tenants  of  this  company  with  a  civil  bill  of  ejectment  for  non¬ 
payment  of  rent.  And  this  is  the  company  who  are  to  regulate 
Ireland  and  give  fixity  of  tenure  to  the  wretched  Irish  serfs 
of  Partry.  Is  it  true  ?  They  cannot  shuffle  out  of  that  part  of 
the  case.  Here  are  the  documents — the  civil  bill  processes 
wickedly,  maliciously,  and  cruelly  issued  by'  Proudfoot,  to  whom 
this  company  have  delegated  all  the  fearful  powers  of  the  landlord. 
Though  Mr.  M'Cullagh  is  not  personally  to  blame,  yet  he  allowed 
his  name  to  be  used  by  an  unscrupulous  and  wicked  servant.  He 
says  the  man  did  his  duty,  and  he  is  responsible  for  the  consecjuen- 
ces.  What  was  the  object  of  serving  the  civil  bill  ejectment 
except  to  harass  the  tenants,  and  compel  them  to  pay  the  costs, 
which  they  have  paid  ?  What  was  the  object  but  vexation  ? 
What  was  the  object  but  the  exercise  of  pure  tyranny  ?  This 
man  Proudfoot,  who  lives  in  the  old  family  mansion  of  the  Gildeas, 
took  on  himself  the  position  of  lord  and  master  of  these  wretched 
people.  He,  out  of  pure  malice,  pure  wickedness,  and  pure  wanton¬ 
ness,  issued  a  process  on  the  2nd  of  November  for -rent  due  on  the 
1st  November.  That  was  oppression  unparalleled  in  the  history  of 
Irish  landlordism,  and  never  before  attempted  to  be  proved  in  a 
court  of  justice.  Yet  that  transaction  is  not  directly  disapproved 


APPENDIX. 


437 


of  by  the  board.  The  next  transaction  is  one  that  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
admitted  his  entire  and  thorough  disapprobation  of,  and  the 
moment  he  heard  of  it  he  desired  it  should  be  stopped.  You  see, 
gentlemen,  the  wretched  rental  of  this  estate,  the  small  sums  paid 
by  the  tenants,  evei'y  penny  of  which  was  screwed  from  an  im¬ 
poverished  and  wretched  tenantry.  The  rent  is  scarcely  due 
when  they  are  compelled  by  Proudfoot  to  give  their  I  0  Us  or 
promissory  note,  including  four  pence  in  the  pound  as  a  penalty  on 
them  for  not  paying  their  rent  to  the  day,  and  that  is  to  be 
exacted  if  they  do  not  pay  the  promissory  note  at  maturity.  These 
documents  are  not  produced.  I  have  called  for  them  in  vain. 
Some  agents  are  listening  to  me.  Was  such  a  system  ever  before 
herd  of  on  any  estate  as  that  on  the  2nd  November  they  took  a 
bill  from  the  tenants  for  rent  due  on  the  1st,  and  charged  them 
4d.  in  the  pound  penalty?  Was  it  right  or  not  to  apply  to  this 
system  of  usury  the  term  of  exacting  the  pound  of  flesh  ?  If  a 
justification  were  pleaded,  I  have  established  it  on  the  plaintiffs 
case.  The  assertion  is  literally  true.  What  is  the  next  topic  ?  A 
system  of  striping  was  introduced.  Some  years  ago  the  whole  estate 
was  striped  by  Mr.  Stanhope  Kenny,  of  Ballinrobe.  Possession  was 
then  demanded  and  refused.  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  admitted  he  signed 
the  notices  to  quit,  with  the  consequent  demand  for  possession  last 
November.  The  rents  were  raised,  and,  it  would  be  proved, 
were  raised  far  above  the  valuation.  Mr.  Brett’s  valuation  was 
taken  from  1843,  the  most  prosperous  year  that  Ireland  ever  saw. 

It  was  before  the  famine,  and  before  the  periodic  failure  of  the 
potato  crop  which  afflicted  the  country.  At  that  time  the  popu¬ 
lation  of  the  country  was  nine  millions,  which  had  since  sunk 
down  to  six  millions.  Two  millions  of  the  people  had  since 
emigrated  or  died  at  home.  Mr.  Brett  took  the  old  valuation  of 
1843,  but  the  valuation  should  be  taken  since  the  Act  of  1852,  and 
it  showed  the  rents  had  been  increased  from  30  to  100  per  cent. 
Mr.  Brett  seems  to  think  that  is  very  little,  but  it  is  a  great  deal 
to  these  poor  tenants.  It  is  said  that  the  people  because  of  this 
are  bordering  on  a  state  of  distraction.  Yet  that  statement  is  said 
to  be  a  libel.  It  is  perfectly  plain  that  the  tenants  of  Derassa 
were  entitled  to  the  common  of  that  mountain,  and  they  had  no 
right  to  be  disturbed  without  some  formal  notice  to  quit.  The 
letter  containing  that  statement  appeared  in  the  Irish  Times  of 
the  4th  January.  Mr.  M'Cullagh  in  the  meantime  called  on 
Major  Knox  to  complain.  Major  Knox  receives  him  as  one 
gentleman  should  receive  another.  Major  Knox  tells  him  it  is  a 
public  matter,  but  that  if  he  will  authorize  his  secretary  or  officer 
to  write  a  letter  to  the  Irish  Times  explaining  the  whole  matter  it 
will  be  inserted,  and  also  a  leading  article.  Accordingly,  on  the 
11th  of  January  Mr.  Proudfoot’ s  letter  appears  in  the  Irish  Times. 

I  must  say  in  the  whole  affair  Major  Knox  has  been  most  unfairly 
used.  This  is  a  quarrel  which,  if  between  anyone,  is  between 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh  and  Father  Lavelle.  Major  Knox  most  fairly 
opened  the  columns  of  his  journal  to  both  one  and  the  other.  It  ■ 


438 


APPENDIX. 


was  a  matter  of  public  interest  in  which  the  public  were  deeply 
concerned.  The  Irish  Times ,  in  a  spirit  of  fair  play,  inserted  the 
statement  of  the  company’s  agent.  Proudfoot,  not  content  with 
going  into  details  of  his  management  of  the  estate,  made  the  most 
ill-founded  attack  on  the  Ilev.  Mr.  Lavelle,  for  which  he  brought 
his  action,  and  that  libel  was  certified  to  be  wilful  and  malicious. 
The  leading  article  published  in  the  Irish  Times  spoke  highly  of 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  personally,  as  one  who  would  be  the  last  to 
sanction  even  the  appearance  of  harshness.  (Reads  the  comments 
which  appeared  in  the  Irish  Times. )  The  Rev.  Mr.  Lavelle  replied 
to  the  letter  of  Proudfoot,  who  had  used  bitter  and  insulting 
language  towards  him,  and  they  had  heard  that  letter.  It  had 
been  stated  that  if  the  matter  had  ended  with  the  first  letter  this 
most  ill-advised  action  would  not  have  been  brought.  What  was 
the  fact  with  reference  to  the  count  concerning  the  second  letter  ? 
The  writer  said  :  “  In  the  meantime  I  repeat  every  single  statement 
contained  in  my  letter  as  to  the  management  of  the  estate.  The 
tenants  have  been,  without  even  the  form  of  law,  deprived  of  their 
mountain  outlet.  Their  rents  have  been  raised  on  several  town- 
lands,  30,  35,  50,  and  60  per  cent,  over  Griffith’s  valuation,  and  their 
pasture  taken  to  feed  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  flock.”  There  was  concen¬ 
trated  in  one  sentence  almost  every  cause  of  complaint  against 
the  Irish  Times.  He  told  them  that  the  tenants  had  no  right  to 
be  deprived  of  their  common.  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  cattle  and  sheep 
were  feeding  on  the  property  of  the  tenants,  for  it  was  their 
property  until  deprived  of  it  by  form  of  law.  He  had  proved  by 
Mr.  Brett,  that  in  one  townlaud  the  rent  was  raised  100  per  cent, 
over  Griffith’s  valuation.  Was  this  a  fair  comment,  and  was  it  a 
fair  criticism  upon  matters  stated  by  the  parties  bringing  the 
action  to  be  of  public  importance,  vital  importance,  and  every¬ 
thing  almost,  in  a  word,  to  the  people  of  Ireland  ?  He  hoped  they 
would  remember  that  these  were  comments  upon  the  conduct  of 
the  company  in  the  management  of  their  estate.  Against  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh’s  personal  conduct,  his  position  as  a  gentleman  and  as  a 
merchant,  he  said  nothing,  and  Major  Knox  was  incapable  of  saying 
anything  either.  But  as  regarded  his  conduct  as  connected  with  the 
management  of  the  Partry  estate,  he  was  responsible  for  the  acts 
of  Proudfoot.  The  great  majority  of  these  acts  he  firmly  believed 
Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  to  be  perfectly  ignorant  of,  but  he  was  in  this 
position,  having  intrusted  the  management  of  a  great  property  to 
a  person  like  Proudfoot,  who  was  only  getting  a  salary  of  £60  and 
a  commission.  He  should  say  in  the  management  of  this  estate 
the  company  showed  very  little  sense.  They  all  knew  that  in 
Clare  and  the  west  of  Ireland  there  were  land  agents  very  well 
known,  having  great  offices,  great  control  over  the  tenants,  great 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  who  knew  thoroughly  how  to 
manage  the  poor  tenants— who  collected  the  rents,  having  con¬ 
sideration  for  a  bad  year — giving  time  and  advising  even  the 
advance  of  money,  and  not  doing  as  had  been  done  here,  screwing 
the  last  shilling  out  of  the  poor  tenants,  and  never  being  in  a 


APPENDIX. 


439 


position  to  advance  money,  and  paying  labor  with  meal.  "Was 
that,  he  asked,  the  way  Ireland  was  to  be  regenerated  ?  Another 
topic  he  would  notice  here  was,  and  which  he  would  prove  if 
material,  that  Linskey  was  the  under-surveyor  of  Brett.  He 
ridiculed  the  idea  of  Linskey  suing  the  tenants  for  striping  the 
lands.  He  said  that  these,  your  Irish-speaking  tenants,  paying 
£1  10s.,  £1  12s.,  or  £1  17s.  9d.  a-year,  not  one  of  them  knowing 
the  number  of  acres  in  their  possession,  were  so  curious  about 
their  holdings,  that  they  actually  employed  a  surveyor  to  map  out 
their  own  estate.  (Laughter.)  Linskey  sued  them  for  work  and 
labor  done,  but  the  chairman  dismissed  the  matter  on  the  merits, 
so  there  was  an  end  to  the  attempt  of  suing  these  unfortunate 
people  for  striping,  for  which  the  company  was  liable,  and  for 
whidh  he  had,  no  doubt,  been  paid  by  Brett.  In  all  these  trans¬ 
actions  he  should  say  Mr.  Brett  had  acted  with  the  greatest 
kindness,  and  he  had,  no  doubt,  regretted,  and  would  regret  for 
the  rest  of  his  life,  that  these  unfortunate  tenants  built  and  im¬ 
proved  on  his  promise.  Now,  was  the  second  letter  a  libel  ?  This 
was  not  like  an  ordinary  plaint.  It  was  the  only  plaint  he  had 
ever  seen  signed  by  three  counsel.  Three  were  employed  to  draw 
it — one  for  Mr.  Proudfoot,  one  for  the  company,  and  one  for  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh.  He  did  not  know  which  of  them  assumed  the 
character  of  counsel  for  Proudfoot,  for  principally  this  action  had 
been  brought  as  a  set-off  for  the  action  of  Mr.  Lavelle  against  the 
company,  through  Mr.  Proudfoot,  at  the  Galway  assizes,  where 
they  were  beaten.  They  now  came  to  the  third  letter,  which 
said  ;  *  ‘  The  company  had,  for  awhile,  my  very  best  wishes.  I 
was  delighted  with  its  programme  of  helping  on  the  tenants  to  a 
position  of  comparative  independence — in  fact,  of  converting  their 
tenure  at  will  into  a  fee  farm.  But  when  I  saw  the  means  adopted 
towards  the  attainment  of  this  end,  a  system  of  fleecing  in  the 
shape  of  unnecessary  and  even  illegal  law  costs,  of  fines  and 
penalties,  and.  in  increased  rack-rents,  of  the  seizure  of  people’s 
grass  without  form  of  law,  or  leave,  or  compensation,  of  the  like 
seizure  of  their  turf  banks,  with  a  contemptuous  disregard  for 
their  personal  feelings,  I  felt  I  would  be  false  to  my  trust  were  I 
to  cover  those  excesses  with  the  mantle  of  my  silence.”  If  these 
were  the  good  intentions  of  the  company,  they  all  knew  a  place, 
the  pavement  of  which  consisted  of  good  intentions,  and  where 
they  could  get  the  good  intentions  of  Mr.  Proudfoot  ad  libitum. 
‘  ‘  The  law  gives  the  unhappy  tenants  no  protection.  ’ ’  He  repeated 
those  grave  words.  The  law  gave,  according  to  its  own  form, 
redress  for  personal  injury  ;  but  it  wa$  the  law  of  the  land  that 
this  system  of  tenancy  from  year  to  year  might  be  made  an  engine 
of  the  most  cruel  oppression ;  no  protection  being  thus  given,  the 
whole  side  of  a  country  might  be  cleared,  as  had  been  the  case 
before.  But  it  was  because  the  law  did  not  give  this  actual  pro¬ 
tection  that  the  right  to  speak  and  write  according  to  conscience 
was  given  by  the  English  law.  When  they  took  its  burthen,  they 
also  received  its  benefits — to  write  and  speak  of  these  things — that 


440 


APPENDIX. 


a  man  in  the  darkness  and  obscurity  of  Partry,  who  might  be  guilty 
of  these  crimes  against  society,  might  be  brought  there  before  the 
bar  of  public  opinion,  and  that  that  land-jobbing  company  might 
be  compelled  by  the  voice  of  society  to  do  its  duty  to  its  tenants. 
It  was  not  morally,  though  it  might  be  by  law  the  absolute  right 
of  landlords  to  increase  the  rents  to  a  sum  the  tenants  were  not 
able  to  pay.  Werei  tenants  to  be  made  serfs  and  mere  caretakers 
by  signing  those  documents  at  the  caprice  of  Mr.  Proudfoot  ?  In 
this  matter  Mr.  Lavelle  was  right  in  speaking,  from  every  prin¬ 
ciple  of  duty  and  of  religion  :  and  every  principle  which  actuated 
a  man  to  deal  fairly  with  his  fellow-man  compelled  him  to  speak. 
This  was  not  as  if  the  people  lived  in  some  public  place,  where 
their  wrongs  would  be  seen.  They  were  Irish-speaking  tenants, 
only  three  or  four  men  on  the  whole  estate  being  able  to  read  oi 
write,  having  no  means  of  communicating  their  grievances, 
having  no  landlord  to  whom  they  could  appeal,  and  at  the  mercy 
of  this  man  Proudfoot.  What  did  Mr.  Lavelle  do  under  these 
circum stances  ?  He,  through  the  columns  of  the  public  press,  laid 
the  wrongs  of  the  Partry  tenants  before  shareholders  virtually  the 
owners  of  the  property,  and  told  them  their  suffering  and  trouble, 
aud  the  injustice  done  them,  of  civil  bill  ejectments  brought  on 
the  2nd  November  for  rent  due  on  the  1st  of  the  same  month,  of 
the  charge  of  4d.  in  the  pound  levied  for  not  paying  up  the  rent, 
and  generally  of  the  system  of  petty  tyranny  and  oppression 
practised  by  Proudfoot,  and  which  could  not  have  been  practised 
by  an  Irish  gentleman.  He  told  that  through  the  columns  of  the 
Irish  Times ,  and  told  it  truly.  And  were  they,  therefore,  to  give 
this  company  £1,000  damages,  to  be  added  to  the  property  of  the 
shareholders,  because  Major  Knox,  proprietor  of  the  Irish  Times , 
opened  the  columns  of  his  newspaper  fairly  and  fully  to  both 
sides,  that  they  might  be  heard,  and  that  the  truth  might  ulti¬ 
mately  come  out.  He  went  to  the  charge  of  raising  the  rents 
from  30  to  100  per  cent,  over  Griffith’s  valuation.  Counsel  com¬ 
pared  the  former  with  the  increased  rents  on  some  of  the  town  lands, 
to  show  the  excess  of  the  latter  over  the  government  valuation. 
His  learned  friend  said  the  previous  day  that  the  tenantry  was  a 
sort  of  model  or  prize  tenantry,  and  spoke  of  the  prosperity  they 
enjoyed  under  the  National  Investment  Company.  They'  would 
see  from  some  of  them  whether  that  was  true.  The  last  cause  of 
complaint  was  one,  as  to  which  anyone  having  the  slightest  know¬ 
ledge  of  land  should  find  fault  with  the  management  of  the 
property — namely,  their  interference  with  the  rights  of  the 
tenantry  cutting  turf.  To  stop  the  people  cutting  turf  was  to  de¬ 
prive  them  almost  of  the  right  of  existence,  for  it  was  one  of  the 
dampest,  coldest,  poorest  districts  in  the  world.  When  the 
tenantry  drained  a  bog  and  had  the  dry  bank,  they  were  compelled 
to  go  to  some  fresh  and  wet  bog  to  cut  turf.  This  simply  was  cruelly 
wanted  to  be  done— and  by  this  system  of  petty  interference  it  was 
sought  to  manage  the  country  people,  instead  of  allowing  them  to 
manage  for  themselves.  This  matter  was  repeated  in  the  last  letter. 


APPENDIX. 


441 


The  Chief  Justice  directed  counsel’s  attention  to  one  of  the 
letters  in  reference  to  the  woman  Gibbons. 

Mr.  Heron  continued  —The  woman  Gibbons  was  served  with 
notice  to  quit,  as  she  owed  a  year’s  rent,  and  she  sent  £5  to 
Proudfoot  by  a  man  who  would  be  produced  ;  that  was  refused. 
To  Proudfoot  it  seemed  to  be  a  trouble  or  a  difficulty  about  taking 
money  on  account.  Accordingly,  with  the  rejection  of  the  £5  a  pro¬ 
cess  was  served  for  £6  6s.  which  was  paid,  with  10s.  costs.  Proud¬ 
foot  had  been  cross  examined  as  to  this  on  Thursday,  and  he  told 
them  that  it  was  true  she  paid  10s.  but  against  that  she  received, 
6s.  worth  of  meal,  so  that  the  balance  between  the  poor  widow 
and  the  Land  Investment  Company  was  a  sum  of  4s.  Enoi'mous 
costs  had  been  incurred  between  some  of  the  tenants,  the  company, 
and  the  solicitors,  some  of  which  was  paid  by  the  company  and 
some  by  the  tenants.  He  did  not  know  who  had  been  advising 
those  proceedings,  but  as  the  name  of  the  respected  solicitor  of  the 
company,  Mr.  Meldon,  had  been  mentioned,  he  must  say  he 
believed  that  gentleman  knew  nothing  whatever  of  those  three 
documents  he  had  read  to  them.  1 0  Us  were  given,  which  he  asked 
from  Mr.  Proudfoot,  but  these  were  either  destroyed  or  had  not 
yet  come  up  from  the  office.  Although  the  surveyor  Linskey 
processed  other  tenants  to  the  sessions,  it  appeared  she  (Mrs. 
Gibbons)  had  ultimately  to  pay  him  6s.  6d.  for  surveying.  The 
parable  of  Nathan  had  been  alluded  to,  but  really  he  would  not 
dwell  upon  it.  It  reminded  him  of  the  poor  man’s  lamb  and  the 
stranger’s  feast.  There  was  one  allusion  to  which  he  should 
refer — namely,  “  Amen,  the  man  who  hath  done  those  things  is  a 
child  of  death.  ”  Serjeant  Dowse  said  they  knew  what  the  Irish 
tenantry  were.  They  knew  that  they  were  excitable,  and  that 
this  appeared  in  the  Irish  Times ,  in  order  to  have  it  circulated 
among  the  tenants  of  Partry,  so  that  there  might  be  some  incentive 
to  get  rid  of  Proudfoot  in  some  unlawful  manner.  Now,  he  believed 
that  in  the  whole  district  there  was  not  a  single  man  could  read  the 
Irish  Times  except  Father  Lavelle.  He  ventured  to  say  that, 
celebrated  as  that  great  journal  was  dll  over  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 
and  America,  the  inhabitants  of  Partry  had  no  knowledge  even 
of  the  name  of  the  Irish  Times ,  or  of  Major  Knox — who  was 
here  defending  their  rights — till  this  trial.  (Laughter.)  Counsel 
read  Father  Lavelle’s  letter  authorizing  Major  Knox  to  give  his 
name,  as  author  of  the  letters,  to  Mr.  M'Cullagh.  He  asked  was 
it  right  to  proceed  against  a  journal  when  a  man  boldly,  honestly, 
aud  fearlessly  came  forward  with  his  name  to  a  document,  and 
openly  detied  his  opponent.  No  one  but  a  company  would  bring  an 
action  against  Major  Knox  under  the  circumstances,  and  ask  a 
special  jury  of  the  county  Dublin  to  give  £1,000  damages  for  what 
Father  Lavelle  had  done  and  admitted.  He  asked  the  jury  to 
consider  the  question,  was  it  a  libel  to  have  the  simple  truth 
honestly  put  in  print  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  redress  of  those 
unfortunate  people  ?  Mr.  Heron  then  read  a  letter  from  Major 
Knox,  in  reply  to  a  communication  from  Mr.  Oldham,  the  attorney 


442 


APPENDIX. 


for  the  plaintiff  ;  and  said  that  when  in  a  public  journal  writings 
appeared — when  the  authorship  was  avowed — when  the  name  was 
given-— when  the  manuscript  was  ready  to  be  giveu  up — if  a  legal 
battle  was  to  take  place,  it  ought  to  take  place  directly  between 
the  two  parties,  and  Major  Knox,  the  proprietor  of  the  newspaper, 
ought  not  to  be  made  to  intervene.  One  document  in  the  case 
still  remained  to  be  read  by  him,  and  that  was  the  document  to 
which  again  he  invited  the  attention  of  the  public,  and  it  was  the 
document  headed,  “The  Tenants’  Proposal.”  One  hundred  and 
five  of  those  “  tenants’  proposals”  had  been  produced  by  the  com¬ 
pany,  and  were  now  given  by  him  in  evidence.  There  were  about 
an  equal  number  of  the  second  document ;  that  was  the  care¬ 
taker’s  document.  He  would  like  to  know  who  had  drawn  up 
this  first  document.  It  was  not  to  be  found  in  any  of  the 
ordinary  books  on  conveyancing.  It  wras  a  curiosity.  Counsel 
then  read  the  document  to  which  James  Philbin,  junior,  had,  as  he 
said,  put  his  “criss-cross” — a  man  who  only  spoke  Irish;  and 
they  should  remember  that  Mr.  Proudfoot,  who  was  to  explain 
the  document  to  the  man,  only  spoke  English.  He  would  like  to 
see  Mulready,  or  some  great  painter,  painting  a  picture  of  Philbin 
putting  his  mark  to  the  document,  and  the  agent  of  the  estate 
being  the  witness  to  it — (“witness  present,  J.  P.  Proudfoot”) 
— and  this  at  the  side  of  the  miserable  cabin  near  Partly,  where 
that  wretched  man,  James  Philbin,  junior,  lived.  Philbin’s  rent 
had  been  £1  19s.,  and  he  signed  this  document  for  £.3  16s.  10d.,  a 
rent  which  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  did  not  know  to  be  due,  and  which 
Mr.  Proudfoot  said  the  man  was  not  yet  under.  This  was  all 
done  by  a  company  who  had  bought  the  property  to  sell  it,  and 
who  wanted  to  get-up  the  rental.  This  proposal,  which  was  not 
binding  on  the  company,  specified  that  the  tenant  was  to  pay 
the  usual  taxes  between  landlord  and  tenant.  Part  of  the 
plaintiff’s  case  was  that  the  company  were  to  pay  the  taxes,  but  on 
that  printed  agreement  the  tenants  were  to  pay  the  usual  taxes, 
and  it  was  proved  that  some  of  the  taxes  were  paid  by  the  tenants. 
They  were  not  to  house  any  cattle  or  fowl  whatever  under  the 
penalty  of  £10.  That  might  be  a  very  good  provision  in  some 
parts  of  the  country.  In  Switzerland,  where  they  understood  their 
own  affairs,  and  were  at  liberty  to  manage  them,  they  kept  cattle 
in  the  houses,  and  in  other  parts  of  the  world  they  did  the 
same,  and  on  a  cold  winter’s  night  he  could  not  see  why  a  tenant, 
if  he  should  bring  his  heifer  into  a  house,  on  the  side  of  a  mountain, 
was  to  be  fined  in  £10,  to  be  recovered  by  distress.  This  proposal 
also  stated  the  tenants  should  not  sell  or  dispose  of  the  hay  which 
was  grown  on  their  lands  ;  and  another  part  of  the  agreement  was 
that,  “I  shall  not,  nor  will  not,  take  more  than  one  white  crop  off 
said  lands  without  following  same  with  a  green  crop  of  some  kind 
or  description,  and  shall  put  in  not  less  than  50  barrels  of  lime  ouce 
in  every  three  years,”  and  it  was  also  provided  that  they  should 
not  permit  lodgers  in  their  houses  under  the  penalty  of  £10.  How, 
if  a  lodger  happened  to  be  passing  that  way,  how  much  did  they 


APPENDIX. 


443 


think  he  would  pay  ?  Why  the  most  of  it  would  be  a  penny  for  a 
night — (laughter)  and  if  he  was  a  poor  man  he  would  be  taken  in 
for  the  love  of  God.  This  company  with  a  capital  of  a  million 
sterling  made  the  covenant  with  the  poor  tenants  that  for  every 
hen  that  entered  their  doors  they  were  to  be  fin  ed  £1 0.  (Laughter. ) 
By  what  possibility,  he  would  ask,  were  the  hens  and  chickens  to 
be  kept  from  the  kitchen  during  the  months  of  March  or  April, 
and  be  expected  to  live  during  the  spring  ?  His  (Mr.  Heron’s) 
case  was  this,  that  the  tenants’  proposals  could  only  be  made  a 
contract  with  the  company  by  the  payment  of  rent,  and  that  they 
were  avoiding  the  payment.  Had  the  parish  priest  a  right  to  speak 
about  those  things  ?  Had  the  public  press  a  right  to  notice  those 
things  ?  Was  this  the  way  that  property  was  to  be  managed  in 
Ireland  ?  Was  this  to  be  the  model  system  to  be  introduced  and 
gradually  to  extend?  He  would  ask  the  jury  by  their  verdict  to  say 
no,  and  he  would  ask  them  by  their  verdict  to  say  that  whatever 
had  been  written  or  spoken  of  the  proceedings  of  this  company, 
every  single  word  had  been  justified  by  the  proof  before  them. 
He  would  again  repeat  that  this  was  no  libel  against  Mr.  Andrew 
M  ‘Cullagh,  and  it  never  was  intended  so  to  be.  It  was  a  severe 
but  just  criticism  of  the  conduct  of  the  company.  That  was 
the  meaning  of  the  plea.  The  learned  gentleman  then  quoted  the 
opinion  of  Lord  Chief  Justice  Cockburn  with  reference  to  the 
law  of  libel,  and  continued — Who  shall  say  that  the  duty  of  this 
company  to  their  tenants  is  not  a  public  duty  ?  Who  shall  say, 
even  in  these  two  days’  trial  in  this  public  court  of  justice, 
that  right  has  not  been  to  some  extent  done  to  these  people  ?  Who 
shall  say  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  himself  will  not,  after  this  trial,  be 
inclined  more  shrewdly,  more  critically,  more  severely  to  criticize 
the  conduct  of  Mr.  Proudfoot,  many  of  whose  transactions  have 
now  for  the  first  time  been  brought  to  the  notice  of  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh 
himself?  The  object  of  this  is  to  bring  into  the  light  of  day  those 
matters  which  have  been  done  in  the  dark  at  Partly ;  and  the 
object  is  a  just  one,  provided  that  Major  Knox  has  nottranscended 
the  rule  of  fair  and  honest  criticism  upon  the  conduct  of  public 
transactions.  I  ask,  before  I  conclude,  is  this  increased  rent  to  be 
enforced,  or  was  it  to  be  enforced  ?  I  ask,  before  I  conclude,  this 
being  the  only  estate  ever  obtained  by  this  company  for  the 
purpose  of  management — is  this  the  plan  by  which  they  are  to 
regenerate  Ireland,  and  give  the  Irish  tenants  fixity  of  tenure? 
I  ask  them  if  this  increased  rent  is  to  be  exacted  ?  When  they 
come  into  court  they  say  it  is  not  to  be  exacted,  and  although  these 
documents  are  signed  early  in  February  of  this  year,  yet  the 
ridiculous  story  is  now  told  to  you  by  the  agent  Proudfoot  to 
avoid  the  consequences  of  this  action — the  ridiculous  and  false 
story,  because  it  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  true,  is  that, 
although  105  tenants  signed  the  agreement  from  year  to  year  for 
increased  rent,  yet  that  it  is  all  a  sham,  and,  although  it  could  be 
forced  upon  the  tenant,  it  need  not  be  accepted  by  the  company, 
and  the  old  rent  is  still  to  be  put  on  them.  I  said  tins  was  a 


444 


APPENDIX. 


matter  of  public  interest.  I  said  this  was  a  matter  affecting  the 
liberty  of  the  press,  and  my  client,  and  my  sole  client  is  my  friend 
Major  Knox.  But  1  feel  that  in  asking  you  for  your  verdict  for 
him,  I  ask  for  a  verdict  which  reacts  upon  a  wider  sphere  and 
enters  into  a  more  enlarged  horizon,  as  it  were,  than  any  discussion 
affecting  the  mere  liberty  of  the  press,  which  now,  in  England  or 
Ireland,  under  the  judges  of  the  land  who  preside  either  in  the 
Queen’s  Bench  at  Westminster,  or  the  Four  Courts  in  Dublin,  the 
liberty  of  the  press  is  perfectly  secure.  I  regret  to  say  as  yet  the 
liberty  of  the  Irish  tenant  is  not  ecpially  secure.  J  speak  not  only 
for  Major  Knox,  who  is  brought  as  the  defendant  into  this  court, 
but  I  speak  ou  behalf  of  the  humble  parish  priest,  who,  in  that 
wild  mountain  district,  was  the  only  person  to  communicate  to 
the  public  the  wrongs  of  these  poor  tenants.  I  also  feel  I  have  a 
right  to  speak  on  behalf  of  these  poor  people  who  have  been 
brought  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives  to  Dublin  as  witnesses  in  a 
court  of  justice,  who,  as  Irish- speaking  witnesses,  scarcely  under¬ 
stand  what  I  now  say,  but  who  know,  with  that  love  of  justice, 
and  that  appreciation  of  justice,  which  the  Irish  nation  has  always 
had,  and  which  Sir  John  Davies  admitted  many  years  ago — who 
know  at  this  moment  that  their  case  is  being  tried  by  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  of  Ireland,  and  they,  in  their  hearts,  know  and 
believe  from  him  they  will  get  justice.  Your  verdict,  gentlemen, 
affects  great  interests.  Your  verdict  may  decide  for  them 
whether  they  are  to  remain  at  a  fair  rent  all  the  year  round  on 
that  old  mountain,  where  their  fathers  were  before  them,  or 
whether  they,  facing  the  horrors  of  the  emigrant  ship,  are  to  join 
that  band  of  exiles  in  America — who  are  there  with  rancor  in 
their  hearts,  with  but  one  thought  about  that  country  from  which 
it  is  possible  they  were  exiled  under  similar  circumstances  to 
those  which  were  detailed  before  you  in  this  case.  No  man 
is  more  dangerous  than  an  exile ;  but  the  policy  of  some 
Irish  landlords,  and  the  management  of  some  Irish  estates, 
has  largely  increased  the  number  of  dangerous  exiles  abroad. 
I  therefore  ask  you,  gentlemen,  when  I  apply  to  you  for 
your  verdict,  to  say  that  this  is  a  just  criticism  on  the  conduct  of 
a  public  man.  I  am  entitled  to  appeal  to  you  on  behalf  of  the 
humble  parish  priest  and  his  parishioners  in  this  court.  Yes, 
gentlemen — is  this  to  go  on?  Are  the  exiles  to  increase  in 
number  and  in  hatred  against  the  government  which  they  believe 
sent  them  from  this  country.  The  only  danger  I  see  to  the 
great  country  of  which  we  form  a  part,  is  that  -  small  cloud, 
now  no  bigger  than  a  man’s  hand,  rising  on  the  western  horizon, 
that  yet  may  turn  into  a  thunder-cloud  overshadowing  the  firma¬ 
ment.  Is  this  such  management  of  Irish  land  as  is  calculated  to 
remove  the  skeleton  of  the  house  of  English  prosperity  ?  This 
system  has  been  exposed  in  this  case.  You  are  the  judges 
wh ether  wright  or  wrong.  I  appeal  to  you  for  your  verdict  on 
behalf  of  the  liberty  of  the  press  in  this  case,  which,  I  venture  to 
say,  is  exciting  more  attention  in  the  public  mind  than  any  case 


APPENDIX. 


445 


ever  tried  before  you  in  Ireland.  I  appeal  to  you  for  the  liberty 
of  the  press,  and  ask  for  your  verdict  for  Major  Knox.  Your 
verdict  will  be  remembered  for  a  long  day  when  you  find  for  the 
defendant ;  and  that  verdict  will  not  be  less  acceptable  to  your 
own  consciences  and  the  country  when  you  know  and  believe  that 
that  verdict  affects  not  merely  the  defendant,  but  that  when  the 
news  of  that  verdict  reaches  that  wild  mountain  district  where  these 
unfortunate  people  live— that  as  the  mother  teaches  the  child  to 
pray  for  its  daily  bread  in  every  wild  mountain  home  in  that 
western  district,  your  verdict  will  have  saved  families  from  de¬ 
struction^ — you  will  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the 
people  there  on  their  knees  will  pray  to  Almighty  God  for  bless- 
i  igs  on  you  and  yours. 

At  the  close  of  Mr.  Heron’s  magnificent  address,  delivered 
with  consummate  ability,  there  was  unanimous  applause  in  the 
court,  continued  until  the  officer  of  the  court  interfered.  Probably 
one  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  this  exciting  trial  was  the 
anxiety  of  the  Irish -speaking  witnesses  to  catch  the  nature  of  all 
that  was  going  on  from  the  tone  and  action  of  the  speakers. 

The  Kev.  Patrick  Lavelle,  P.P.,  sworn  and  examined  by  Mr. 
Falkiner,  Q.  C. — I  am  parish  priest  of  Partry,  extending  over  the 
entire  of  this  estate ;  there  are  500  families  in  the  parish,  and 
nearly  3,000  souls;  the  parish  is  18  statute  miles  long,  and  my 
parishioners  are  the  poorest  class  of  people — the  poorest  of  the 
Irish  peasantry  ;  I  am  connected  with  the  parish  upwards  of 
eleven  years  ;  there  are  no  resident  gentry  on  the  property  ;  I 
don’t  mean  to  exclude  Major  Horsfall,  who  comes  occasionally, 
and  who  is  a  very  good  landlord. 

Mr.  Falkiner,  Q.C. — You  stated  in  one  of  your  letters  that 
there  was  not  such  oppression  practised  on  any  other  estate  in 
Ireland,  model  Scully’s,  perhaps,  excepted,  and  that  the  tenants 
were,  without  ceremony  or  form  of  law,  deprived  of  the  mountain 
outlet  which  they  always  enjoyed.  Did  you  refer  in  that  to  De- 
rassa  ?  Yes  ;  the  right  to  which  I  referred  there  was  the  right 
of  grazing  on  that  outlet,  which  the  tenants  had  long  e'n joyed. 

Did  you  know  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  that  mountain  of  Derassa 
was  grazed  on  as  a  matter  of  right?  Yes,  I  did;  for  the  last 
eleven  years  I  have  seen  cattle  on  that  mountain  outlet  belonging  to 
the  inhabitants  of  Derassa,  Tournavode,  and  the  village  of  Shrah  ; 
to  my  own  knowledge  they  grazed  their  cattle  on  that  mountain 
outlet  as  a  matter  of  right. 

When  you  speak  of  the  village  of  Shrah,  do  you  mean  the 
townland  of  Shrah  ?  Yes  ;  there  are  19  families  on  that  town- 
land  ;  the  people  of  Shrah  had  as  much  right  to  the  grass  on  that 
mountain  as  the  people  of  Derassa  ;  there  was  no  interference 
with  their  right  until  the  time  the  company  came  into  possession ; 
Shrah  was  included  in  my  parochial  district,  and  was  part  of  my 
cure  ;  they  had  always  a  little  stock  of  sheep  and  cattle  on  the 
mountain  ;  to  my  knowledge  every  year,  with  the  exception  of 
one  year,  the  people  have  been  buying  Indian  meal  for  their  sup- 


446 


APPENDIX. 


port,  failing  the  potato ;  not  being  the  produce  of  the  soil,  they 
had  to  pay  for  it. 

You  stated  that  the  village  was  in  a  cold,  wild,  mountainous 
district,  yet  that  the  outlet  in  question  was  seized  on  by  the 
manager  of  the  company  and  stocked  with  Welsh  bullocks  ?  Yes  ; 
I  saw  foreign  bullocks  on  it,  or  Scotch  bullocks  :  at  all  events 
they  were  not  born  in  Mayo.  (Laughter.) 

You  alleged  that  in  consequence  of  their  treatment  the  people 
were  in  a  state  bordering  on  distraction  ?  I  speak  from  personal 
knowledge  ;  those  poor  people  have  been  coming  to  me  complain¬ 
ing  of  the  hardships  to  which  they  were  subjected,  and  one  man, 
named  Michael  Henaghan,  who  had  been  obliged  to  leave  his 
land,  cried  in  my  kitchen  in  consequence  of  being  deprived  of  it. 

Are  these  the  same  people  who  were  described  as  contented  ? 
The  same  people  ;  I  never  witnessed  such  discontent. 

The  Chief  Justice — What  has  become  of  Henaghan,  who  cried 
for  being  dispossessed  ?  He  is  living  with  a  daughter  on  another 
property ;  Philip  Henaghan,  whose  cow  was  distrained,  told  me 
he  would  emigrate  in  consequence  of  the  treatment  he  received  ; 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  five  or  six  families  have  emigrated  from  the 
estate.  [The  Eev.  Mr.  Lavelle  mentioned  the  names  of  several 
persons  who  fled  the  estate  and  went  to  America.]  James 
Henaghan  sent  home  the  other  day  £20  to  his  wife  and  two 
children ;  they  emigrated  since  the  company  came  into  possession  ; 
two  other  families  left  the  estate,  not  to  America,  but  they  went 
to  the  county  Galway ;  James  Henaghan  and  Patrick  Murray’s 
son  and  daughter  went  to  America ;  the  daughter,  when  she 
went  to  Liverpool,  had  not  enough  to  pay  her  passage,  and  I  was 
obliged  to  send  her  over  a  balance  of  30s.,  with  a  letter  to  the 
shipping  company  to  take  care  of  her ;  the  shipping  company 
gave  her  a  second-class  passage  for  steerage  fare  ;  1  -wrote  one  of 
my  letters  in  consequence  of  what  I  heard  from  Philip  Henaghan. 

Mr.  Butt  objected  to  the  evidence. 

The  Chief  Justice  received  it,  subject  to  the  objection. 

Witness  to  the  Chief  Justice — Before  I  wrote  the  letter  I  saw 
Philip  Henaghan  on  St.  Stephen’s  Day,  about  two  o’clock  ;  I 
knew  him  to  be  a  tenant  on  the  townland  of  Derassa  for  eleven 
years  ;  it  was  on  the  statement  he  made  to  me  that  I  wrote  that 
portion  of  the  letter ;  I  believed  it  then  to  be  true,  and  I  believe 
it  still  to  be  true ;  the  cattle  sent  in  on  the  mountain  outlet,  as  I 
stated  in  my  letter,  were  the  cattle  of  Mr.  M‘Cullagh ;  I  saw' 
sheep  grazing  on  the  Port  Royal  demense  having  on  them  the 
brand  of  A.  M‘C.,  which  I  took  to  mean  Andrew  M‘Cullagli ; 
John  Leydon  was  then  the  tenant  in  occupation  ;  he  was  evicted 
after  the  company  came  into  possession,  and  he  was  travelling 
through  the  country  for  twelve  months  seeking  shelter ;  the  sheep 
grazing  on  the  laud  formerly  occupied  by  Leydon  and  now  by 
Proudfoot  were  marked  by  M  ‘Cullagh’s  brand. 

Mr.  Ealkiner — It  was  -stated  that  there  were  a  very  large 
number  of  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letters  printed  and  circulated  ?  Major 


APPENDIX. 


447 


Horsfall  showed  me  a  newspaper  in  his  drawingroom,  containing 
the  letter  ;  the  Major  said  he  did  not  know  who  sent  it  to  him. 

In  your  letter  of  the  18th  January,  which  you  wrote  to  Major 
Knox  after  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter  appeared,  I  come  to  the  passage 
which,  I  daresay,  you  remember,  “  In  the  meantime  I  repeat 
every  single  statement  contained  in  my  letters  as  to  the  manage¬ 
ment  of  the  estate.  Tenants  have  been,  without  even  form  of 
law,  deprived  of  their  mountain  outlet  ;  their  rents  have  been 
raised  in  several  townlands  to  figures  varying  from  30  to  35,  50, 
a.nd  60  per  cent.,  in  round  numbers,  over  Griffith’s  valuation; 
while  their  pasture  has  been  taken  away  to  feed  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s 
sheep.”  Now  there  are  three  statements  in  that.  You  heard  stated 
yesterday,  that  there  were  processes,  or  ejectments,  and  notices  to 
quit  served  on  the  tenants  ?  Yes. 

You  refer  in  your  letter  to  the  same  outlet  at  Derassa  ?  Yes  ; 
all  these  statements  I  believe  to  be  true  ;  it  appears  I  made  one 
or  two  mistakes,  partly  against  myself,  and  partly  against  the 
company,  but  I  think,  striking  a  balance,  that  is  a  very  fair 
statement ;  I  specified  four  townlands. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  is  it  true  that  in  more  than  one  townland 
the  rents  were  raised?  Yes;  I  said  from  30  to  60  per  cent., 
but  what  has  been  proved  to  be  30  to  100  per  cent. 

Did  you  see  a  leading  article  favorable  to  the  company  in  the 
Irish  Times  published  on  the  15th  January  ?  I  read  that  article 
and  was  very  much  displeased  with  it. 

And  you  wrote  the  letter  of  the  27th  January  after  that 
(counsel  read  the  letter)  ?  Yes  ;  when  I  read  the  article  my  first 
impulse  was  to  take  proceedings  against  the  paper. 

When  you  said  unnecessary  and  illegal  law  costs,  to  what  did 
you  refer  ?  Firstly,  to  the  excessive  payments  for  ejectments  ; 
secondly,  the  demand  for  surveyor’s  fees  under  threat  of  distrain¬ 
ing  the  people’s  cattle  ;  thirdly,  the  demand  for  I  O  Us  on  notices 
to  quit,  actually  exacted  in  one  case  in  the  shape  of  money  ; 
fourthly,  the  demand  for  re-entrances,  which  were  to  be  paid 
partly  in  money  and  partly  in  I  O  Us  ;  and,  fifthly,  the  demand 
for  some  other  papers  which  I  or  the  tenants  knew  nothing  about ; 
the  people  were  telling  me  that  they  were  called  upon  to  sign 
certain  papers  which  they  knew  nothing  about,  and  to  engage  to 
pay  certain  money  for  signing  the  papers ;  1  wrote  that  letter 
solely  on  the  representations  of  these  people,  knowing  them  to  be 
true,  and  being  able  to  prove  them  ;  I  have  heard  the  claims 
made  before  the  Ballinrobe  court  by  the  surveyor  for  fees. 

You  heard  the  evidence  of  4d.  in  the  pound  being  charged  for 
the  bill  of  exchange  or  promissory  note?  Yes;  these  were  the 
matters  to  which  I  referred. 

The  increased  rack  rents  that  have  been  spoken  of  ?  Yes. 

Chief  Justice — I  would  like  to  know  where  you  got  Griffith’s 
valuation  ?  I  got  them  from  the  Clerk  of  the  Union  at  Ballinrobe 
and  from  the  poor  law  books,  accurately  or  inaccurately  ;  I  got 
the  other  column,  as  to  the  rents,  from  the  tenants  themselves. 


448 


APPENDIX. 


Mr.  Falkiner — Do  you  know  anything  with  reference  to  the 
turf  hanks  ?  Nothing  personally,  but  what  will  be  proved. 

Did  you  know  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  to  be  the  chairman  of  the  com¬ 
pany  ?  Yes. 

Did  you  know  that  when  you  wrote  the  letter  ?  I  did,  for  I  saw 
the  documents  signed  by  him,  and  by  the  published  report  of  Mr. 
Brett;  I  was  introduced  to  Mr.  M‘Oullagh  as  chairman  by  Mr. 
Meldon  in  1866  ;  I  wrote  the  fact  stated,  with  refei'ence  to  the 
Widow  Gibbons  from  the  representation  made  to  me  by  the  man 
who  lives  with  her,  and  believing  it  to  be  true. 

Did  you  know  the  I  0  Us  -were  executed  by  the  landlord  ? 
Personally  I  had  no  knowledge  ;  there  are  witnesses  here  who  do 
know  ;  I  knew  the  I  0  Us  were  exacted.  [Counsel  continued  to 
read  from  the  letter  to  the  shareholders  ;  “Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  then 
need  make  no  boast  of  paying  a  higher  rent  for  Port  Boyal  than 
anyone  else  could  pay  ?  Who  else  was  allowed  to  compete  ?  The 
tenants  in  possession  even  got  no  chance.”] 

Witness — There  seems  to  have  been  some  mistake  on  that  sub¬ 
ject  ;  the  farm  to  which  I  refer  in  that  is  Port  Boyal  alone,  and  I 
understood  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  in  his  letter  published  in  the  Galway 
Vindicator,  to  refer  to  the  same. 

Did,  in  point  of  fact,  a  tenant  get  a  chance  ?  No.  Never  heard 
of  it  being  offered  to  them  ;  I  believe  Mr.  M‘ Cullagh  expended 
£400  on  the  farm  and  lodge.  It  is  stated  to  be  only  £300,  but  I 
don’t  see  how  it  could  be  done  for  that.  Who  is  living  there 
now’  ?  Mr.  Proudfoot.  At  that  time  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  was  there. 
I  think  I  am  bound  to  explain  a  passage  in  the  latter  part  of  that 
letter,  in  which  I  quoted  from  David  ;  I  believe  it  was  not  strictly 
accurate,  as  I  wrote  it  from  memory  ;  I  meant  by  it  not  that  Mr. 
M ‘Cullagh  should  be  shot  by  any  of  the  Partry  tenants,  but  that 
he  deserved  the  moral  reprobation  and  censure  of  the  public  ;  I 
knew  that  not  one  of  the  tenants  would  see  that  paper  ;  from  my 
personal  knowledge  I  am  bound  to  say,  that  what  are  called  the 
improvements  effected  in  the  way  of  fencing  and  draining,  which 
have  been  made  so  much  of  here,  very  immaterially,  indeed,  affect 
the  condition  of  the  people ;  that  the  lands  held  by  the  people  are 
not  at  all  materially  improved  by  the  draining  of  which  so  much 
has  been  spoken  ;  that  I  say  from  my  personal  knowledge  ;  last 
winter  I  saw  the  place  that  has  been  principally  drained  more 
flooded  than  I  have  seen  it  for  the  last  eleven  years,  and  it  con¬ 
tinued  so  occasionally  for  the  space  of  four  months ;  on  one 
occasion  a  priest  who  went  to  anoint  a  poor  old  man  had  to  be 
carried  through  the  wrater  on  the  son’s  back. 

His  lordship — Would  these  people  understand  one  of  these 
proposals  unless  it  vras  explained  by  one  who  understood  Irish  ? 
No,  my  lord.  There  are  only  two  on  the  property  who  could 
understand  English,  they  are  Matthias  Conway  and  John  Lydon. 

To  Mr.  Falkiner — The  spring  of  1867  vras  the  severest  that  I 
remember  since  I  was  a  child ;  in  consequence  of  the  distress  I 
got  a  large  quantity  of  meal  for  the  people,  thanks  to  the  people 
of  Dublin,  amongst  others. 


APPENDIX. 


449 


Air.  Falkiner — A  statement  was  made  here  that  seemed  a  little 
strange,  that  the  people  did  not  want  the  meal,  and  that  they 
gave  it  to  the  pigs?  I  heard  that  statement  also  in  Galway,  and 
I  made  it  my  special  duty  to  inquire  of  nearly  every  person  in  the 
parish  who  was  relieved  by  me,  and  they  denied  it. 

His  lordship — Was  there  distress  then?  There  was  very  dire 
distress  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1867.  I  divided  between 
£400  and  £500  worth  of  meal  amongst  the  people.  1  was  £150 
in  debt  before  I  applied  for  a  penny  ;  it  was  not  all  given  to  the 
tenants  on  this  estate,  but  I  relieved  nearly  every  person  on  the 
estate,  and  they  certainly  required  it  more  than  the  others  ;  in 
the  village  of  Kilkerrin  no  improvement  has  taken  place  through 
the  company,  and  there  has  been  a  large  rise  in  the  rent ;  the  rent 
has  been  raised  on  every  tenant,  and  there  has  been  no  improve¬ 
ment  to  the  extent  of  a  farthing. 

Mr.  Nolan  (juror) — If  the  stripings  were  made,  was  not  that 
an  improvement  ?  The  stripings  were  made  there  several  years  ago. 

To  his  lordship — They  were  made  by  Mr.  Stanhope  Kenny,  of 
Ballinrobe,  who  was  formerly  receiver  ;  the  villages  of  Kilkerrin, 
Shrah,  and  Derassa,  have  not  been  improved  to  the  extent  of  a 
farthing ;  I  mean  by  villages  the  townlands  ;  the  village  of  Cloonee 
has  been  partially  but  little  improved. 

Mr.  Nolan  (juror) — Ho  you  mean  the  houses  or  lands  ?  The 
lands. 

The  foreman — My  lord,  would  it  be  judicious  for  the  jury  to  go 
and  see  the  property  ?  (Laughter.) 

His  lordship — No  ;  I  think  it  would  be  rather  too  far  this  eve¬ 
ning.  (Laughter.)  I  think  you  must  only  take  the  evidence  of 
the  witnesses. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — In  oue  of  your  letters  you 
say,  “The  village  is  in  a  cold,  mountainous  district,  where  the 
people  could  not  support  themselves.”  What  village  do  you 
mean — Derassa  ?  I  meant  both  Derassa  and  Shrah,  but  princi¬ 
pally  Derassa  ;  I  include  Shrah  because  the  tenants  there  grazed 
in  common  on  the  mountain  ;  the  people  of  Shrah  complaiued  to 
me  of  having  been  dispossessed  of  their  pasture,  and  I  believe 
that  they  were  dispossessed  of  their  right  to  the  pasture. 

Had  they  any  pasture  of  their  own  ?  They  had  a  wild,  worth¬ 
less  mountain,  and  200  or  300  acres  of  that  was  taken  from  them  ; 
when  I  speak  of  the  people  of  Shrah  being  dispossessed  of  their 
pasture,  I  mean  the  pasture  on  Derassa. 

Had  Shrah  any  pasture  of  its  own  ?  They  had ;  the  pasture 
they  had  was  of  such  a  nature  that  sheep  never  could  live  on  it, 
and,  in  consequence,  from  time  immemorial  they  exercised  the 
right  of  grazing  the  sheep  on  Derassa. 

Then  the  mountain  near  themselves  was  perfectly  worthless  ? 
Yes,  perfectly  worthless  for  sheep,  and  it  would  graze  cattle  very 
badly  ;  I  cannot  swear  whether  they  were  actually  prevented  or 
not ;  I  think  they  have  not  been  actually  prevented,  but  they 
are  morally  prevented,  because  they  have  been  warned  that  they 

2  F 


450 


APPENDIX. 


will  be  prevented ;  I  believe  what  I  stated  in  my  letter  is  true, 
that,  of  the  whole  area  of  912a.  3r.  8p.  at  a  rough  estimate  800 
acres  have  been  taken  from  them.  I  believe  they  were  deprived  of 
700  or  800  acres  ;  the  tillage  land  is  such  as  is  generally  found  in 
mountainous  districts,  and  the  pasture  was  and  is  utterly  worth¬ 
less. 

Did  you  think  it  fair  to  accuse  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  of  taking  away 
from  the  tenants,  as  an  act  of  extortion,  800  acres,  without  stating 
that  it  was  utterly  worthless?  It  would  be  equally  fair  to 
state  that  the  whole  land  was  worthless ;  I  have  described  the 
wdiole  place  as  being  bleak  and  barren  ;  the  tenants  have  now 
actually,  but  not  morally,  all  the  property  they  ever  had ;  if  a  land¬ 
lord  gives  me  a  notice  to  quit  out  of  a  farm  which  I  actually  hold, 
it  is  true  that  I  am  in  actual  possession,  but  it  is  equally  true  to 
say  that  I  am  already  in  public  estimation  deprived  of  that ;  the 
tenants  of  Cloonee  told  me  that  they  had  been  deprived  of  their 
pasture. 

Did  you  hear  Mr.  Heron  say  that  this  was  no  attack  upon  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  at  all  ?  I  heard  him  say  that  there  was  no  personal 
attack  on  the  character  of  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  nor  did  I  intend  it  as 
such  ;  I  spoke  of  him  always  as  a’  chairman — in  his  official  cha¬ 
racter. 

And  you  meant  no  personal  attack  on  him  ?  Most  certainly 
not. 

If  that  be  the  case,  Father  Lavelle,  why  did  you  mention  his 
name  in  the  letters  ?  Because  I  found  it  at  the  foot  of  the  docu¬ 
ments.  I  saw  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  name  to  several  official  documents. 

Did  you  think  it  fair  to  say  that  that  cow  was  imprisoned  by 
Chairman  M‘Cullagh  ?  I  did,  and  I  do  think  it  fair. 

When  you  were  giving  that  picture  of  the  distraining  of  Hen- 
aglian,  did  you  think  it  would  excite  indignation  against  the  person 
that  did  it  ?  Against  the  person  in  his  official  capacity,  I  think 
it  would. 

Did  you  think  it  would  be  discreditable  to  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  ? 
Officially  most  certainly,  and  as  it  ought  to  be  (laughter),  but  not 
personally.  The  inference  I  intended  to  be  drawn  when  I  wrote 
that  letter  was,  that  he  was  responsible  for  the  act  simply. 

Do  you  think  this  was  a  personal  attack  on  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh? 

• — “  As  I  am  to  address  you  more  in  detail  as  regards  the  increased 
rent,  I  shall  now  conclude  with  the  expression  of  my  belief  that 
the  cattle  are  the  private  property  of  the  chairman,  which  are 
now  feeding  on  the  grass  for  which  your  tenants  are  now  paying 
rent.”  Did  you  think  that  a  personal  reflection  ?  To  give  a  fair 
answer,  yes  ;  as  a  personal  reflection  I  think  it  was  well  merited. 
(Laughter).  I  meant  by  that  statement  that  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh 
appropriated  to  himself  the  pasture  for  which  the  tenants  paid 
rent;  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  chairman  of  the  company,  was  lord 
paramount  over  the  tenants,  and  commanded  their  obedience ;  I 
call  the  taking  of  their  grass  robbery,  and  I  believe  it  still  to  be 
robbery  ;  1  knew  at  the  time  I  wrote  that  letter  that  some  of  the 


APPENDIX. 


451 


tenants  had  given  up  possession,  and  for  the  space  of  18  months 
Mr.  M'Cullagh  was  in  illegal  occupation  of  that  land,  because 
the  tenants  were  not  legally  put  off  it. 

Were  the  tenants  put  out  of  that  land  ?  They  were — that 
will  be  proved  to-morrow ;  I  have  been  introduced  to  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh,  and  I  believe  I  dined  with  him  ;  I  had  no  personal 
dispute  with  him,  but  I  had  a  dispute  with  Mr.  Proudfoot. 

What  was  that  about  ?  It  was  about  some  case  at  Ballinrobe 
courthouse,  in  which  he  acted  a  very  indecent  part,  by  putting 
out  his  tongue  at  me,  and  for  which  I  arraigned  him  in  the  public 
court;  I  used  the  expression  of  “robber”  towards  him  when 
addressing  my  people  in  chapel;  but  I  never  called  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
a  robber  personally  ;  I  called  the  company  and  Proudfoot  robbers. 

But  did  you  ever  call  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  a  robber?  Not  personally, 
I  think ;  but  even  if  I  did  I  don’t  think  I  would  be  very  far 
■wrong.  (Laughter). 

If  you  called  him  a  robber  it  would  not  be  very  far  wrong.  Now, 
is  that  your  opinion  ?  Yes,  in  this  sense.  If  I  had  a  garden,  and 
you  went  in  and  took  my  grass  off,  you  would  be  a  robber  ;  but 
you  would  not  do  that,  for  you  are  too  good  a  tenant-right  man, 
Mr.  Butt.  (Laughter.)  I  begged  of  the  people  to  give  up  peaceable 
possession,  and  I  raised  their  hearts  and  hopes  by  telling  them  that, 
if  not  themselves,  their  children  might  yet  be  owners-in-fee  of 
these  farms.  That  was  the  programme  issued  by  the  company, 
but  afterwards  I  saw  clearly  the  company  were  only  land-jobbers, 
and  I  took  the  course  I  did.  It  was  the  mode  of  treatment 
adopted  by  the  company  towards  the  tenants  that  turned  me 
against  the  company.  I  represented  the  matter  to  Mr.  M'Cullagh 
some  time  afterwards. 

The  Chief  Justice — When  you  used  the  word  robber  to  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh,  what  did  you  refer  to?  It  is  in  regard  altogether  to 
the  robbery  of  the  grass. 

Mr.  Butt— From  the  altar  of  the  church  did  not  you  say  that 
the  company  and  Mr.  Proudfoot  were  robbers  ?  I  did,  but  I  don’t 
believe  I  called  anyone  else  robbers  from  the  same  place. 

Did  you  call  Naughton  a  robber?  I  did  not. 

Did  you  call  him  an  evil  spirit  (laughter).  I  did  uot  I  spoke 
in  Irish  of  him,  and  I  called  him  a  “doolich.”  (A  laugh.) 

What’s  that?  A  clever,  roguish,  little  fellow.  (Great  laughter.) 

The  tenants  who  went  to  America  were  tenants  on  the  Partry 
estate  ;  some  of  them  were  evicted  by  Lord  Plunket  about  eight 
years  ago  ;  these  were  not  original  tenants  on  the  Partry  estate, 
but  they  were  more  original  than  the  company  ;  John  Leydon  was 
evicted  by  the  company,  turned  out,  and  faith  was  broken  with  him. 

You  said  a  tenant  was  evicted  from  Port  Royal?  Yes,  and  it 
was  by  agreement,  but  no  agreement  by  a  tenant  in  that  district 
with  the  company  is  voluntary.  The  tenants  paid  the  rent  for 
Derassa  as  well  as  M‘Oullagh.  I  know  the  Douay  version  of 
the  parable  of  Nathan,  but  I  don’t  know  your  version.  (Laughter). 
That  is  a  Biblical  statement,  and  not  one  reflecting  on  Mr. 


452 


APPENDIX. 


M‘Cullagh.  Bobberies  referred  to  in  my  letter  were  in  reference 
to  robberies  of  the  ^company.  I  was  aware  that  Leydon,  the 
evicted  tenant,  was  only  a  year  in  possession. 

To  Alderman  Tarpey  (a  juror)— The  tenants  are  noticed  that 
they  will  be  deprived  of  some  pasture  they  at  present  enjoy,  and 
they  have  been  actually  deprived  of  some  already. 

Matthias  Conway  examined  by  Mr.  Falkiner,  Q.  C. : 

Are  you  one  of  the  Derassa  men?  Yes. 

How  long  have  you  been  a  tenant  of  Derassa  ?  I  always  lived 
there,  and  my  father  was  a  tenant  for  about  39  years  ;  I  remember 
when  the  company  came  there. 

You  know  Mr.  Proudfoot  ?  Yes. 

Were  you  one  of  the  men  who  were  processed  ?  Yes. 

Do  you  remember  your  rent  falling  due  in  November,  and  going 
to  pay  it  ?  Yes,  I  went  to  pay  on  the  2nd  of  November  the  May 
rent. 

Was  it  taken  from  you  ?  No,  I  met  one  of  his  men,  Martin 
Henaghan,  who  told  me  he  would  not  sit  in  the  office  to  receive  it 
till  the  Tuesday  following,  and  we  returned  home  ;  I  was  then 
served  before  Tuesday — on  Monday. 

You  were  processed  in  ejectment  for  a  year’s  rent  ?  Yes. 

Did  you  give  an  1 0  U  or  a  bill  ?  Yes,  I  gave  a  bill  with  two 
others  ;  we  had  not  a  year’s  rent,  and  the  rent  coming  due  on  the 
1st  of  November,  we  joined  in  a  bill  to  pay  it  in  three  months. 

What  was  the  discount  on  that  bill  ?  Fourpence  to  the  £1. 

Did  you  pay  that  bill  ?  I  did  not ;  he  gave  back  the  discount 
when  we  paid  the  rent. 

When  you  gave  the  bill  were  you  told  you  would  get  it  back  ? 
No. 

Had  you  to  pay  costs  for  that  process  ?  I  had. 

How  much?  11s.  2d.,  and  the  day  following  after  the  costs 
his  bailiff  came  for  3s.  Gd.  more,  but  I  did  not  give  it. 

Was  there  any  change  attempted  to  be  made  with  you  about 
the  mountain  ?  There  was  ;  he  struck  out  a  line  between  us,  some 
of  which  has  been  fenced  since. 

Did  he  say  anything  to  you  about  that  line?  Mr.  Proudfoot 
told  us  it  was  to  separate  us  ;  I  craved  him  for  more  of  the  moun¬ 
tain  than  we  got  for  the  sheep,  but  he  refused  me. 

Was  there  any  change  that  you  know  about  to  be  made  at  the 
turf  bank  ?  He  sent  his  bailiff  to  prevent  me  cutting  the  bog  on 
the  mountain,  but  I  went  to  himself,  and  he  gave  me  leave  for  that 
year. 

Was  the  use  you  wanted  to  make  for  the  sheep  and  the  turf  bog 
the  same  as  you  had  always  enjoyed  ?  Yes. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — There  was  no  other  place 
pointed  out  to  me  to  cut  turf  on  ;  when  I  went  to  Proudfoot  I 
asked  his  leave  ;  he  did  not  refuse,  and  1  was  never  stopped  since  ; 
John  Naughton  wanted  to  stop  me;  in  the  agreement  I  signed 
the  extent  of  my  farm  was  mentioned  at  26.j  acres  ;  I  used  to  pay 
£6  14s.  6d. 


453 


APPENDIX. 

Was  your  rent  raised  ?  It  was. 

What  is  it  now?  £7  10s. 

Have  you  the  same  quantity  of  land  as  you  had  "before  ?  I  was 
better  pleased  the  way  I  was  before. 

Have  you  as  much  land  now  as  you  had  before  ?  I  can’t  tell. 

What  change  was  made  in  your  holding  when  you  made  the 
agreement  ?  I  can’t  tell  you. 

A  juror — Have  you  the  same  land  as  you  had  before  ?  I  have 
not. 

Mr.  Butt — I  don’t  think  he  understands  me. 

The  Chief  Justice  (facetiously) — Indeed  I  think  he  speaks 
English  remarkably  well.  The  only  change  he  noticed  was  the 
change  in  the  rent.  (Laughter.) 

Cross-examination  continued — Before  the  change,  duriug  the 
Chancery  times,  the  Shrah  tenants  sent  their  cattle  to  graze  there, 
and  no  one  ever  turned  them  off ;  1  never  heard  that  the  Derassa 
tenants  made  the  Shrah  tenauts  pay  for  having  their  cattle  there  ; 
I  have  not  made  any  changes  in  my  house,  and  I  never  refused  ta 
give  up  possession  ;  when  I  signed  the  agreement  Mr.  Proudfoot 
read  it  over  to  me,  and  said  it  was  to  give  up  possession  to  the 
company. 

A  juror  (Alderman  Tarpey) — Was  it  the  slane  turf  you  were 
prevented  cutting  ?  Yes. 

When  the  land  was  striped  were  lots  cast?  There  was  be¬ 
tween  me  and  some  other  parties,  but  not  between  me  and  my 
brother. 

Pat  Gibbons  examined  by  Mr.  Kaye,  LL.D. — Do  you  know  the 
Widow  Gibbons  ?  I  do  ;  I  lodge  with  her ;  she  lives  on  the  town- 
land  of  Windmill. 

How  long  has  she  been  tenant  there  ?  I  don’t  know  ;  I  know 
her  to  be  there  for  the  last  twelve  years,  but  she  was  in  it  before  I 
knew  her. 

Was  there  any  change  made  in  her  land  ?  Yes,  it  was  striped. 

Does  she  now  pay  a  higher  rent  ?  Yes.  her  rent  before  was 
£6  17s.  6d. 

What  does  she  pay  now  ?  £8  5s. 

Was  she  served  with  a  process  ?  She  was  ;  on  the  17th  Feb¬ 
ruary  her  son  and  daughter  went  off  to  America,  and  on  the  18th 
Proudfoot  sent  to  know  about  the  land  the  Widow  Gibbons  had  ; 
he  offered  to  give  her  fifteen  perches  and  a  house  if  she  gave  up  pos¬ 
session,  but  1  told  him  they  would  be  no  good,  and  that  I  would 
take  care  that  her  rent  was  paid  ;  on  the  24th  I  went  to  him  with 
part  of  the  rent,  but  he  refused  to  take  it,  and  said  he  would  pro¬ 
cess  her ;  l  asked  when  the  process  would  be  issued ;  he  said  he 
did  not  know,  but  he  wmuld  give  the  widow  two  da^s’ notice ; 
I  returned  to  the  widow  and  told  her  he  would  not  take  part  of 
the  rent  without  the  whole ;  I  then  sold  another  of  her  fields  to 
try  and  make  up  the  rent ;  on  the  2nd  of  March,  1868,  Mr.  Proud¬ 
foot  sent  the  process  without  having  sent  a  notice,  and  the  quarter 
sessions  at  Ballinrobe  were  to  take  place  on  the  10th  of  the  same 


454 


APPENDIX. 


month ;  when  she  got  the  process  I  went  to  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  office  ; 
Mr.  Prouclfoot  asked  me  had  I  brought  the  costs  with  me  ;  I  asked 
him  how  much  they  would  be,  and  to  the  best  of  my  belief  he 
said  the  amount  was  18s.  Sd.,  but  said  he  was  not  sure  ;  I  said  it 
was  too  much  for  the  poor  to  pay.  I  went  to  Ballinrobe  then, 
and  saw  Attorney  Griffin,  who  told  me  that  the  costs  were  only 
10s.,  and  he  told  me  to  take  the  year’s  rent  with  the  10s.  to  Mr. 
Proudfoot,  and  if  he  would  not  take  it  to  put  it  in  my  pocket.  I 
then  went  home,  and  afterwards  went  to  the  office  at  Port  Royal 
with  a  witness  named  Miles  Yarelly,  and  offered  the  rent  with  the 
10s.  costs.  Mr.  Proudfoot  was  not  inclined  to  take  the  rent  at 
first,  and  said  there  should  be  8s,  8d.  more  ;  I  told  him  what  Mr. 
Griffin  said,  but  Mr.  Proudfoot  said  he  would  process  me  if  he  did 
not  get  the  balance  of  8s.  Sd.  ;  he  took  the  10s. ;  will  I  be  excused, 
my  lord,  if  I  make  a  remark  to  the  court  ? 

His  lordship — Will  you  be  excused  for  what  ? 

When  he  got  the  rent  Mr.  Proudfoot  said,  “Well,  Attorney 
Griffin  is  a  damnable  liar.”  I  hope  I  will  be  excused,  my  lord. 

His  lordship — Oh !  sir,  we  hear  much  worse  than  that. 
(Laughter. ) 

Witness — I  am  only  stating  the  truth;  I  could  not  wrong  my 
conscience  ;  I  paid  the  rent,  and  got  a  receipt.  In  the  course  of 
a  few  days  I  met  Mr.  Proudfoot  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from 
the  lodge,  and  he  asked  me  had  the  widow  got  the  balance  yet. 
He  said  he  had  written  to  his  attorney,  and  that  he  told  him  the 
costs  amounted  to  18s.  8d.  Afterwards  one  of  the  bailiffs  came 
to  me,  and  said  that  Mr.  Proudfoot  had  sent  him  for  the  balance 
of  the  money.  I  said  I  did  not  think  she  had  got  it  at  present. 

Was  she  asked  to  sign  any  agreement  ?  She  was  asked  to  sign 
some  agreement  to  give  up  possession  ;  the  agreement  was  sent  to 
her  by  the  process  server,  Henaghan . 

His  lordship — Does  she  speak  English  ?  Yes,  a  little. 

To  Mr.  Kaye — Henaghan  brought  the  agreement  to  her,  and 
read  it ;  she  said  she  had  no  confidence  in  Mr.  Proudfoot,  because 
he  had  broken  his  word  before  to  her ;  she  looked  at  me,  and  I 
said,  “Do  whatever  you  like  she  objected  to  sign  it,  and  the  next 
day  she  got  a  notice  to  quit ;  she  was  not  very  well  at  the  time. 

Has  she  the  land  still  ?  Well,  she  has  not. 

Who  has  it  ?  Andrew  Lechan  has  one  poi’tion. 

His  lordship — Did  the  company  take  up  the  land  ?  I  will  ex¬ 
plain  that ;  on  the  16th  January  Mr.  Proudfoot  sent  a  notice  to 
all  the  tenants  that  he  wanted  them  at  the  office  ;  Andrew 
Lechan,  Martin  Henaghan,  and  I  and  the  widow,  met  there  ;  Mr. 
Proudfoot  told  the  widow  that  she  had  17s.  to  pay  him  ;  he  said 
there  was  5s.  6d.  for  the  costs  of  a  notice,  and  11s.  6d.  for  posses¬ 
sion  money. 

Was  that  for  getting  possession  of  the  new  stripe  ?  Yes  ;  1 
suppose  it  was  for  a  fee ;  he  said  he  would  not  take  a  note  foi 
the  money.  “Well,”  said  I,  “you  took  Andrew  Lechan’s  ana 
Martin  Henaghan’s  note  for  the  money,  and  she  is  as  good  a  mark 


APPENDIX. 


455 


as  they  are,  and  I  will  pay  for  certain  he  asked  would  I  join  her 
in  a  note,  and  I  said  I  might  have  the  money  for  him  before  many 
days,  but  I  never  joined  in  a  note  ;  Linskey,  who  was  there,  said, 
“Well,  Gibbons,  have  you  5s.  8d.  or  5s.  lid.  for  me;”  I  said, 
“You  did  nothing  for  me,  and  I  will  not  pay  you.”  “Well,” 
said  Mr.  Proudfoot,  “I  got  a  letter  from  Mr.  Brett,  and  the  sur¬ 
veyor  must  be  paid,  and  I  will  not  give  possession  of  the  land  until 
you  pay  that  money  and  the  17s.  ;”  I  don’t  know  whether  the 
amount  was  5s.  Sd.  or  5s.  lid.  ;  he  said,  “You  must  give  your 
note  for  it the  surveyor  drew  the  I  0  XJ,  and  her  mark  was  put 
to  it.  , 

His  lordship— Did  he  draw  the  note  for  the  whole  of  the 
money  ?  No,  it  was  for  the  surveyor’s  money ;  Mr.  Proudfoot  gave 
him  pen  and  paper. 

To  Mr.  Kaye — On  Sunday,  the  17th  of  January,  I  met  Father 
Lavelle  and  told  him  all  the  particulars. 

His  lordship — We  have  not  heard  what  became  of  the  land? 
I  have  a  little  more  to  say  yet ;  I  read  Father  Lavelle’s  letter  in 
the  Irish  Times,  in  which  was  stated  how  Widow  Gibbons  was 
treated  and  the  costs  she  was  put  to  ;  and,  after  that,  Mr.  Proud¬ 
foot  sent  notice  by  Naughton  that  he  would  take  the  land  away 
from  the  Widow"  Gibbons  and  divide  it  among  the  rest  of  the 
tenants,  and  in  a  few  days  after  he  sent  me  a  scrap  of  paper  notic¬ 
ing  her  that  the  land  would  be  taken. 

Mr.  Kaye — Has  he  been  as  good  as  his  word  ?  The  land  was 
divided. 

His  lordship — Was  the  land  taken  from  her  ?  It  was  all  taken 
except  the  house  and  about  fifteen  perches. 

How  much  was  there  of  it  ?  There  were  ten  or  eleven  acres  in 
the  stripe  ;  four  of  the  tenants  got  a  surveyor,  and  each  of  them 
took  a  portion  of  the  land. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C. — I  got  the  money  with 
which  to  pay  the  rent  to  Mr.  Proudfoot  from  Miles  Varelly,  but 
V'arelly  got  value  for  it  from  the  widow. 

His  lordship— After  the  service  of  an  ejectment  for  non¬ 
payment  of  rent,  the  party  accepts  the  rent  with  the  costs — it  is 
a  waiver  of  ejectment,  and  how  is  the  tenancy  to  terminate  by 
that  ejectment  ? 

Mr.  Johnston — We  say  the  land  wras  voluntarily  surrendered. 
All  these  proceedings  were  instituted  with  the  view  of  doing  what 
wras  right. 

To  his  lordship — I  was  acting  for  the  widow  in  the  payment  of 
the  rent. 

After  the  payment  of  the  rent  and  costs,  and  the  meeting  of  the 
tenants  at  Mr.  Proudfoot’s,  did  the  widow  sign  any  paper,  or  did 
she  refuse  ?  She  refused  to  do  it. 

His  lordship — Unless  there  was  another  arrangement  she  is  a 
legal  tenant  still,  because  the  acceptance  of  the  rent  and  costs 
puts  an  end  to  the  ejectment.  How  would  it  be  possible,  if  the 
tenancy  is  restored,  to  act  upon  that  ejectment  ? 


456 


APPENDIX. 


Mr.  Butt  said  that  the  ejectment  was  brought  for  the  Novemoor 
of  1867,  and  the  widow  summoned  after  that 

Witness— She  did  not  sign  any  paper  to  my  knowledge  ;  she 
never  told  me  she  did. 

Mr.  Johnston — Did  Mr.  Proudfoot  offer  to  forgive  the  whole  of 
the  rent  if  she  gave  up  the  land,  aud  he  would  give  her  a  house 
and  garden  for  nothing  ?  No  ;  he  never  did  in  my  presence. 

Is  she  not  now  living  in  the  house  and  garden  at  Is.  a-year? 
No ;  she  would  not  have  it ;  it  was  to  be  given  her  on  condition 
she  would  give  up  the  whole  stripe  ;  she  would  not  have  it  ;  she 
paid  another  half-year’s  rent  since  that.  [Receipt  produced, 
dated  October,  1S^.S.] 

His  lordship — How  do  you  get  rid  of  that  tenancy  ? 

Mr.  Johnston — By  this  surrender. 

His  lordship — There  is  a  legal  tenancy  subsisting  in  point  of 
law,  only  to  be  got  rid  of  by  a  written  surrender,  or  by  the  opera¬ 
tion  of  law. 

Mr.  Johnston — There  is  a  year’s  rent  due  at  this  moment,  and 
that  is  forgiven,  and  she  has  a  house  and  land  for  herself. 

His  lordship  (to  witness) — When  wras  the  division  of  the  land 
amongst  the  four  persons?  It  was  in  March  or  April ;  the  widow 
cannot  read  ;  she  speaks  a  little  English. 

To  Mr.  Johnston— She  never  told  me  that  she  had  given  up  the 
land. 

Mr.  Butt  then  read  the  printed  document  dated  16th  November, 
1S68,  to  which  Bridget  Gibbons  had  put  her  mark 

Witness — None  of  the  widow’s  children  are  living  with  her; 
they  are  gone  to  America  ;  there  is  an  old  sister — an  old  maid — 
living  with  her. 

Mr.  Johnston— How  would  a  paralyzed  widow  cultivate  and 
pay  rent  for  eleven  acres  of  land  ?  She  is  my  aunt  by  matrimony, 
and  she  reared  me  when  I  was  an  orphan,  and  I  am  assisting  in 
supporting  her  now ;  I  have  lived  with  her  for  nine  or  ten  years  ; 
I  was  in  the  constabulary,  and  have  a  pension  of  £20. 

His  lordship — That  accounts  for  your  comfortable  appearance. 

Witness  — If  L  had  only  one  shilling  I  would  give  her  half  of  it ; 
and  I  am  the  only  means  of  support  she  has. 

To  Mr.  Kaye— During  the  time  I  have  been  living  with  her  I 
helped  her  in  managing  the  farm,  and  will  help  her  as  long  as  I 
live;  only  for  me  she  would  have  been  out  of  it  long  ago. 

John  Lally,  an  Irish-speaking  witness,  sworn  and  examined 
through  Mr.  Brett,  who  was  sworn  as  an  interpreter. 

To  Mr.  Kaye — I  am  a  tenant  of  Derassa,  and  my  father  was 
paying  rent  there  for  four  or  five  years ;  I  remember  when  the 
company  came. 

Docs  he  recollect  after  that  seeing  his  father’s  sheep  driven  off 
Derassa  mountain?  Yes,  by  a  son  of  the  herd,  John  Comisky. 

Had  he  a  dog?  Yes;  a  dog  with  himself  and  another  boy; 
the  sheep  had  been  in  the  same  place  as  they  were  when  the 
company  came ;  a  relation  of  his  had  the  sheep  there  as  well  as 


457 


APPENDIX. 

his  father ;  I  cannot  say  precisely  where  they  were  when  the  hoy 
drove  them  off ;  he  drove  other  sheep  off  as  well ;  I  did  not  know 
where  he  was  driving  them  to,  hut  it  appeared  as  if  they  were 
being  driven  towards  the  mearing  ;  1  saw  some  of  the  sheep  in  the 
pound,  and  the  pound  keeper  told  me  it  was  Comisky  put  them 
in  pound  ;  I  told  the  pound  keeper  I  would  issue  a  summons  in 
order  to  ascertain  hy  what  right  the  pound  keeper  put  them  there, 
and  shortly  after  the  pound  keeper  let  them  out  without  being  paid 
anything  for  them. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — The  pound  keeper  said  I 
might  take  out  the  sheep  until  he  ascertained  what  I  was  to  pay  ; 
one  of  the  sheep  in  the  pound  belonged  to  me  :  there  were  other 
sheep  there  besides  ;  my  father  was  tenant,  and  paid  Proudfoot 
rent ;  Anthony  Lally  and  my  father’s  name  used  to  be  in  the 
receipt ;  Anthony  Lally  lived  at  Derassa  ;  my  father  was  living  on 
the  land  of  the  late  Lord  Plunket,  but  I  cannot  say  how  long  ago. 

Did  his  sheep  graze  afterwards  on  the  mountain  ?  Yes  ;  I  did 
not  see  them  put  off,  but  I  was  afraid  of  putting  them  there  lest 
they  should  go  astray  or  be  impounded. 

Anthony  Sheridan  sworn,  and  examined  by  Mr.  Kaye,  through 
an  interpreter — I  am  a  tenant  of  the  company  ;  I  have  been  on 
the  townland  since  1  was  born,  and  my  father  and  my  grandfather. 

Was  he  served  with  an  ejectment  process?  Yes,  in  or  about 
Patrick’s  Day ;  I  have  no  learning,  and  I  cannot  say  precisely 
whether  it  was  this  year  or  last  year. 

Does  he  recollect  the  time  when  the  company  came  ?  Ho  has  a 
right  to  recollect,  for  when  they  came  the  land  was  striped  and  lots 
cast ;  Proudfoot  put  witness  on  the  worst  stripe ;  he  first  gave 
him  a  good  stripe,  and  then  took  him  off  it :  witness  was  afraid  of 
him  not  to  give  it  up,  lest  he  would  be  served  with  an  ejectment. 

The  Chief  Justice — Did  the  tenants  of  Shrah  graze  that  moun¬ 
tain  ?  They  used  to  send  their  sheep  on  the,  mountain  of  Derassa, 
they  were  not  allowed  to  cut  the  turf  in  some  places  they  used  to 
cut  originally. 

To  a  juror — There  was  a  little  bog  attached  to  some  of  the 
stripes. 

Had  the  tenants  of  Derassa  a  right  to  the  mountain  to  graze 
it?  The  people  of  Derassa  had  the  right  to  put  cattle  on  it,  and 
the  people  of  Shrah  used  to  send  sheep  there  every  day. 

To  Alderman  Tarpey— They  would  put  them  there  still  if  they 
got  leave  ;  I,  unfortunately,  have  no  sheep  now  to  send  on  it,  and 
the  tenants  who  have  are  afraid  to  do  so. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C. —Did  the  tenants  of 
Shrah  give  compensation  to  the  tenants  of  Derassa  for  allowing 
sheep  to  be  put  on  it?  No,  but  there  was  some  arrangement 
between  them. 

Pat  Gibbons  (an  Irish-speaking  witness)  examined  by  Mr. 
Falkiner,  Q.C — I  am  living  on  Shrah  for  years,  and  my  father  and 
grandfather  before  me  ;  I  have  a  right  to  remember  the  company 
coming. 


458 


APPENDIX. 


Was  a  change  made  after  that  in  the  use  the  Shrah  tenants  had 
of  the  mountain  ?  A  change  was  made  after  the  company  came  ; 
my  sheep  were  turned  off  it. 

Was  there  any  trespass  money  demanded?  There  was. 

Were  the  sheep  put  in  pound?  Yes,  and  trespass  charged  for 
them  ;  a  change  was  also  made  in  the  use  of  the  turf  bog,  and 
Proudfoot  said,  “  There  is  the  drain,  and  you  shall  not  go  beyond 
that.” 

Alderman  Tarpey  (a  juror) — That  was  his  command  to  them. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — The  Shrah  tenants  had  no 
sheep  there  for  the  last  year,  the  herd  of  Proudfoot  drove  them 
off  the  land, 

Patrick  Angel  examined  by  Mr.  Kaye — I  live  on  the  townland 
of  Clonee ;  four  generations  of  us  were  there  :  we  had  a  run  on 
the  mountain  before  the  company  came,  for  our  sheep  and  cattle  ; 
when  they  came  in  1867  the  company  deprived  us  of  that ;  they 
striped  and  cast  lots  for  the  stripes  ;  each  tenant  cast  his  lot ; 
Proudfoot  then  came  to  subdivide  my  stripe,  and  I  would  not  give 
him  possession  of  it ;  he  then  cut  off  the  mountain  from  us,  300 
acres  of  it,  and  would  not  allow  us  to  graze  at  all  on  it. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C. — I  am  a  tenant  of 
Clonee  ;  Proudfoot  said  the  drains  were  made  to  drain  the  land  ; 
I  would  not  give  him  possession  when  he  wanted  to  subdivide  my 
stripe. 

Margaret  Leydon  (a  handsome,  little,  peasant  girl,  speaking  Irish) 
examined  through  an  interpreter,  by  Mr.  Kaye — I  live  in  Derassa 
with  my  father. 

Has  your  father  sheep  ?  He  has. 

Was  he  in  the  habit  of  grazing  sheep  on  the  mountain  ?  He  used. 

Did  you  see  his  sheep  worried  off  the  mountain?  Yes,  by 
Proudfoot’s  herd ;  they  were  set  on  by  the  dog  ;  other  people’s 
sheep  on  Derassa  were  driven  off  by  the  same  herd. 

Major  L.  E.  Knox,  the  defendant,  sworn  and  examined  by  Mr. 
Falkiner,  Q.C. — Major  Knox,  I  believe  you  are  an  Irishman  and 
Mayo  man  ?  I  am. 

You  are  proprietor  of  the  Irish  Times  ?  I  am. 

How  you  recollect  after  Christmas  last  Mr.  Lavelle’s  first  letter 
coming  up  ?  I  do. 

It  was  inserted,  I  think,  on  the  4th  of  January.  It  was. 

Did  you  see  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  some  time  after  the  publication  ?  1 
saw  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  some  days  after  the  publication  of  that,  and 
also  another  letter  in  reply  by  Mr.  Proudfoot ;  I  did  not  see  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  until  after  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  reply. 

Then  you  did  not  see  him  until  after  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter  was 
published  ?  No. 

The  Chief  Justice — The  letter  of  Mr.  Proudfoot  was  inserted 
before  Mr.  M‘CuUagh  made  any  application  to  you? 

W  itness — It  was,  my  lord. 

Mr.  Falkiner — That  letter  of  Mr.  Proudfoot  you  had  seen  before 
it  was  inserted  ?  I  did. 


459 


APPENDIX. 

And  it  gave  the  version  of  the  company  ? 

Mr.  Butt— I  object  to  that :  produce  the  letter. 

The  Chief  Justice — It  speaks  for  itself. 

Mr.  Falkiner — It  was  read  yesterday  by  Mr.  Heron. 

Mr.  Butt  withdrew  his  objection. 

Mr.  Falkiner — You  understood  by  giving  it  insertion  to  be  the 
company’s  account  of  the  transactions  which  were  referred  to  in 
Mr.  Lavelle’s  letter  ?  Certainly  ;  it  was  so  represented  by  Mr. 
Daly,  the  secretary,  who  called  on  me,  as  well  as  by  Mr.  Proudfoot. 

Had  Mr.  Daly  before  inserting  it  an  interview  with  you  ?  I 
am  not  quite  certain  whether  Mr.  Daly’s  interview  with  me  was 
before  or  after  the  publication  of  the  letter. 

Did  you  speak  of  the  subject  matter  of  the  letter,  and  inquire 
as  to  its  correctness — I  mean  to  Mr.  Daly  ?  Certainty,  I  did ;  I 
had  a  long  conversation  with  him,  and  a  longer  one  with  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  afterwards. 

Did  you  speak  to  them  on  the  general  subject  ?  I  went  through 
the  whole  question  in  detail  with  both. 

Chief  Justice — Who  was  the  second  person?  Mr.  Daly,  the 
secretary  of  the  company. 

Were  both  together  ?  No,  my  lord ;  I  am  not  sure  whom  I  saw 
first. 

Mr.  Falkiner — Give  us  the  substance  of  your  conversation  with 
Mr.  M£Cullagh  first.  He  called  on  me,  and  my  impression  is  that 
he  told  me  he  had  seen  one  of  the  editors  first :  he,  however, 
called  on  me  and  complained  of  Father  Lavelle’s  letter  ;  I  asked 
him  whether  he  was  aware  that  a  very  full  reply  had  been  written 
by  Mr.  Proudfoot,  and  a  very  strong  reply  too;  he  said  he  was  aware 
of  it,  but  that  Mr.  Prondfoot’s  letter  was  not  sufficient;  I  asked  him 
on  what  points  was  it  not  sufficient,  as  I  thought  it  appeared  con¬ 
clusive,  for  it  appeared  to  deal  with  every  point  in  the  other  letter, 
and  he  said  that  it  did  not  do  justice  tc  him  and  his  co-directors  ; 
he  denied  then  that  the  company  was  not  doing  all  it  could  for  the 
place,  and  my  recollection  is  that  he  had  a  prospectus,  and  I  got 
one ;  I  don’t  know  how  I  got  it ;  he  told  me  they  were  carrying  out 
the  objects  mentioned  th;re  ;  I  went  through  them  and  told  him  I 
approved  of  them  very  much;  these  were,  giving  fixity  of  tenure 
and  making  the  tenants  owners. 

Did  he  tell  you  of  the  raising  of  the  rents  ?  He  denied  every¬ 
thing  of  that  kind,  and  the  end  cf  the  interview  was  that  I  told 
him  my  desire  was  that  the  Irish  Times  should  do  what  was  fair 
to  everybody  in  the  matter,  and  if  there  was  anything  not  in¬ 
cluded  in  the  letter,  if  he  saw  one  of  the  editors  in  the  evening 
that  I  would  write  a  n.ite  requesting  him  to  add  in  editorial  form 
anything  omitted  in  the  letter,  in  order  to  do  him  justice ;  I 
know  no  more  except  that  I  am  aware  that  some  one  from  the 
company  called  in  the  evening  with  the  sketch  of  a  leading 
article. 

Mr.  Butt— You  did  not  know  anything  of  it  to  your  own. 
knowledge  ? 


460 


APPENDIX. 

Major  Knox — I  was  not  present,  but  I  heard  of  it. 

Mr.  Falkiner — After  that  interview  with  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  didn’t 
you  see  an  article  in  the  paper  on  the  14th  ?  I  did. 

And  approved  of  it  in  consequence  of  it  being  according  to  the 
purport  of  your  conversation  with  the  plaintiff?  It  was  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  promise  I  had  given,  and  as  his  wish  was  that  it  should 
be  published  ;  I  omitted  one  matter  I  very  strongly  impressed  on 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  that  inevitably  that  course  would  bring  forth  a 
reply  from  Father  Lavelle ;  I  said  that  more  than  once,  and  if 
that  was  the  case,  that  the  reply  of  Father  Lavelle  must  be  pub¬ 
lished. 

Had  you  ever  afterwards  an  interview  with  Mr.  M'Cullagh  ?  No. 

Did  you,  when  stating  to  him  that  from  your  experience  you 
presumed  the  inevitable  consequences  would  be  a  rejoinder  from 
Mr.  Lavelle,  give  him  intimation  that  your  columns  would  be 
open  to  him  also  ?  I  told  him  our  desire  was  to  give  equal  and 
fair  play  to  both  ;  I  had  no  interest  in  it  beyond  doing  what 
was  right. 

Is  this  action  your  own — the  defence  of  this  action  your  own  ? 
Certainly,  exclusively.  I  might  mention  that,  although  I  had  no 
interest  in  the  thiug,  I  happened  to  know — which  perhaps  made 
me  feel  a  little  more  interest  in  the  matter — the  property,  and 
something  of  the  tenants. 

I  believe  the  Gildeas  were  relatives  of  the  Knoxes  ?  They  were. 

You  recollect  getting  a  letter  from  Mr.  Oldham,  threatening  this 
action  (letter  of  the  15th  March  handed  to  witness)  ?  I  do. 

Chief  Justice — Could  you  tell  the  exact  date  of  your  interview 
with  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  ?  I  am  nearly  certain,  my  lord,  it  was  the 
loth  January. 

Mr.  Falkiner — It  must  have  been  between  the  11th  and  14th, 
for  then  the  article  was  published. 

Major  Knox — It  was  either  the  12th  or  1 3th. 

Mr.  Falkiner — That  is  a  draft  of  your  letter  in  reply  (document 
produced)  ?  Yes. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Butt,  Q.C. — Major  Knox,  when  you  say 
the  defence  of  this  action  is  your  own,  have  not  you  been  assisted 
in  preparing  that  defence  by  Mr.  Lavelle  ?  Not  at  all,  further 
than  that,  when  we  sent  down  a  gentleman  there  to  get  the  wit¬ 
nesses,  Mr.  Lavelle  helped  him,  and,  I  believe,  accompanied  him 
across  the  mountain. 

You  bad  an  interest  in  this  matter  ?  Not  at  all,  beyond  the  fact 
that  the  Gildeas  were  related  to  my  family,  and  that  I  knew  the 
property. 

But  you  felt  an  interest  ?  To  that  extent. 

Did  you  say  correctly,  you  were  not  quite  sure  whether 
Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  or  Mr.  Daly  had  called  on  you  lirst  ?  1  am  not 
sure. 

Had  both  of  them  called  on  you  before  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter  ? 
I  cannot  say ;  I  remember  Mr.  Daly’s  interview  perfectly,  and  all 
about  it. 


APPENDIX. 


461 


Was  it  before  Mr.  Proud  foot’s  letter?  I  cannot  say  positively , 
Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh’s  interview  certainly  was  after. 

Are  you  quite  sure -it  was  after  the  publication  of  Mr.  Proud- 
foot’s  letter  that  Mr.  M'Cullagh  called  ?  I  am  quite  positive,  for 
I  produced  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter,  which  1  had  in  my  hand,  to  him. 

You  have  no  doubt  of  it  ?  Not  the  least  in  the  world. 

And  if  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s  impression  was  to  the  contrary,  would 
it  shake  yours  ?  No  ;  I  am  perfectly  sure  of  it. 

When  you  got  Mr.  Lavelle’s  letter  did  you  make  any  inquiry 
about  the  truth  of  the  statements  mentioned  in  the  first  letter 
from  any  one  ?  I  had  a  great  deal  to  occupy  me  about  that  time, 
and  I  am  not  sure  which  of  his  three  letters  I  had  a  correspon¬ 
dence  with  Mr.  Lavelle  about.  He  assured  me  of  the  truth  of 
the  statements  in  them. 

Did  you  tell  Mr.  M'Cullagh,  in  your  interview  with  him,  that 
you  had  not  seen  the  first  letter  before  it  was  published  ?  I  am 
not  sure  whether  or  not  I  had  seen  it. 

Did  you  tell  him  that  ?  My  impression  is  that  I  had  not  seen 
it;  I  don’t  know  whether  I  told  him  that,  but  whatever  I  told 
him  was  the  fact. 

Mr.  Butt — Indeed  I  am  not  saying  that  it  was  not,  but  you 
have  no  particular  recollection  of  that  part  of  the  conversation  ? 
My  impression  is  that  I  told  him  I  had  not  seen  it. 

Did  you  say  anything  like  this — that  if  vou  had  seen  it  you 
certainly  would  not  have  published  it  ?  Certainly  not. 

But  you  would  have  published  it  ?  I  would  have  published  any 
letter  from  Mr.  Lavelle,  from  my  knowdedge  of  him. 

You  would  have  published  any  letter  from  Mr,  Lavelle  ?  Most 
emphatically,  if  Father  Lavelle  told  me  it  was  true— H  would  at 
once  accept,  his  assurance;  he  had  written  before  in  the  Irish 
Times ,  and  everything  he  wrote  was  perfectly  accurate. 

A  juror  (Alderman  Tarpey) — Did  you,  or  any  member  of  the 
Irish  Times  staff,  ever  refuse  Mr.  M‘Cu!lagh,  or  any  member  of 
this  company,  any  reply  to  Father  Lavelle’s  letters?  Not  at  all, 
but  on  the  contrary. 

You  gave  them  perfect  liberty,  and  opened  the  columns  of  the 
Irish  Times  to  those  gentlemen  to  reply  ?  Certainly,  I  told  them 
both  it  was  our  anxious  wish  to  do  so. 

Philip  Henaghan,  examined  by  Mr.  Kaye,  by  means  of  inter¬ 
pretation —  1  am  a  tenant  of  Derassa.;  I  have  a  right  to  remember 
St.  Stephen’s  Day. 

Did  he  hear  anything  from  Mr.  Proudfoot  at  that  time  ?  His 
cow  was  taken  up  about  midday  at  that  time. 

How  much  rent  did  he  owe  at  that  time  ?  £3  7s.  and  some 
pence,  a  year’s  rent. 

Did  he  offer  any  rent  to  Proudfoot  that  day  ?  He  offered  him 
half  a  year’s  rent,  which  he  had  to  give  him,  with  5s.  costs 
besides,  but  he  refused  to  take  it. 

When  did  he  do  that  ?  Two  days  after  the  cow  was  seized ; 
Bryan  Comisky  was  left  in  charge  of  the  cow. 


4G2 


APPENDIX. 


To  a  juror  (Alderman  Tarpey) — Comisky  did  not  charge  any¬ 
thing,  but  Proudfoot  charged  him  5s.  along  with  the  half  year’s 
rent. 

To  the  Chief  Justice — He  was  to  send  a  daughter  to  America, 
but  he  was  not  going  there  himself ;  he  was  put  out  of  his  garden 
and  his  holdings  ;  he  was  over  40  years  living  there. 

Mr.  Kaye — Was  the  striping  he  was  offered  able  to  support  him¬ 
self  and  his  family  ?  He  could  not  pay  rent  for  the  stripe  and 
support  himself ;  he  was  left  in  the  old  stripe  for  the  present  year. 

Alderman  Tarpey — He  says  that  he  would  sooner  have  half  what 
he  had  than  the  whole  of  the  new  stripe. 

Mr.  Kaye — Ask  did  he  say  anything  about  going  to  America  if 
he  was  obliged  to  take  the  new  stripe  ?  He  said  that  he  would 
sooner  go  beg  than  go  on  the  new  stripe — that  he  would  not 
take  it. 

Ask  did  he  say  he  would  go  to  America  if  he  was  forced  to  take 
it  ?  He  said  he  told  the  bailiffs  so,  and  that  he  would  tell  Mr. 
Proudfoot  so  if  he  met  him,  but  he  does  not  say  he  met  him. 

Cross-examined  by  Air.  Johnston,  Q.C. — He  says  the  5s.  must 
have  been  charged  for  the  notices. 

Ask  him  did  he  get  a  notice  to  quit  before  the  distress  ?  He 
thinks  he  did. 

Ask  d  jes  he  think  the  5s.  he  paid  was  for  attorney’s  fees  for 
that  notice  ?  He  does  not  know ;  the  bailiff  charged  him 
nothing. 

Ask  did  he  lei!  the  bailiff  he  would  go  to  America  ?  He  said  he 
told  the  herd  he  would  go  to  America — that  he  would  go  any 
place  sooner  than  go  on  the  new  stripe. 

Did  Proudfoot  or  the  bailiff  tel!,  him  that  if  he  gave  up  the  place 
he  would  be  forgiven  the  rent  ?  He  says  that  in  the  spring  or 
winter  of  the  year  he  was  told  by  Proudfoot  that  if  he  gave  up 
possession  of  his  Knd  he  would  be  left  his  house  and  manure  ;  he 
was  told  that  last  spring ;  he  was  afraid  to  give  up  possession  be¬ 
cause  he  did  not  believe  he  would  be  left  in  the  place ;  he  says  that 
Proudfoot  prevented  him  tilling  the  land. 

To  a  juror  (Mr.  Kenny) — The  people  of  Shrah  used  to  send  up 
their  sheep  on  the  mountain,  and  as  an  equivalent  the  people  of 
Derassa  used  to  cut  turf  on  the  land. 

Mr.  Johnston — Ask  did  Proudfoot  make  this  offer  before  the 
cow  was  seized  ?  He  does  not  know  whether  it  was  before  or  after 
— that  if  he  did  give  up  possession  Proudfoot  prevented  him 
making  any  tillage  on  the  land  till  towards  Atay ;  then  it  was 
arranged  they  were  to  hold  on  till  November  next. 

To  a  juror — They  got  no  leave  to  make  tillage  till  towards  May, 
and  then  it  was  very  bad  tillage. 

Air.  Johnston — Ask  did  Proudfoot  prevent  him?  He  says  that 
Proudfoot  wanted  them  to  go  on  the  new  stripes  and  prevent  them 
making  tillage  ;  he  has  tillage  on  the  land  now,  but  it  is  bad 
tillage,  and  he  was  not  allowed  to  make  it  till  the  year  was 
ended. 


APPENDIX. 


463 


Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.,  then  handed  in  the  following  documentary 
evidence — The  agreements  with  the  tenants,  dated  2Sth  of  April, 
1868;  105  documents,  dated  from  the  12th  to  the  25th  of  Nov., 
by  which  that  number  of  tenants  agreed  to  hold  as  cai-etakers  to 
Mr.  M'Cullagh ;  56  tenants’  proposals,  from  November,  ’68,  to 
February,  ’69;  a  notice  to  quit,  29th  of  April,  ’68,  on  James 
Philbin,  of  Clonee  ;  the  particulars  of  the  distress  on  Philip 
Henaghan,  on  the  26tli  November,  1S68;  the  civil  bill  by  the 
plaintiff  against  the  Leydons,  dated  9th  of  June,  ’68  ;  the  dismiss 
against  Thomas  Leydon,  of  18th  June,  ’68,  in  same  case ;  a  civil 
bill  ejectment  for  non-payment  of  rent,  against  James  Henaghan, 
on  2nd  November,  ’67,  for  one  year’s  rent  due  on  the  1st  of 
November,  ’67 ;  a  civil  bill  ejectment,  on  Thomas  Henaghan,  of 
2nd  November,  ’67,  for  rent  due  on  the  1st  of  November,  ’67 ;  a 
civil  bill  ejectment,  against  Matthias  Coirway,  of  2nd  November, 
for  rent  due  on  the  1st  of  November,  ’67  ;  a  civil  bill  ejectment, 
27th  of  February,  ’68,  against  Bridget  Gibbons  and  others,  for 
non-payment  of  rent,  due  on  the  1st  of  November,  ’68 ;  another 
copy  of  same,  on  another  of  the  defendants,  in  the  same  cause ; 
a  civil  bill  ejectment,  for  use  and  occupation,  agaiust  Patrick 
Angel,  of  the  9th  of  June,  ’6S;  an  ejectment  in  Court  of  Queen’s 
Bench,  against  same,  of  2nd  of  April,  ’69 ;  Major  Knox’s  letter 
of  5th  of  March,  ’69;  and  a  leading  article  in  the  Irish  Times, 
of  14th  of  January,  ’69. 

This  closed  the  case  for  the  defence. 

Serjeant  Dowse  then  obtained  permission  to  re-examine  Mr 
Proudfoot,  with  the  view  of  going  into  a  rebutting  case. 

Mr.  Proudfoot,  in  reply  to  Mr.  Johnston,  denied  that  he  had 
ever  prevented  Henaghan  tilling  his  land  ;  he  did  not  know  that 
Henaghan  would  stop  on  the  lands  ;  Margaret  Leydou’s  father 
was  a  tenant  of  Bryan  Comisky’s,  and  his  sheep  were  not  turned 
off  the  land  by  his  or  the  company’s  directions ;  wituess  never 
told  the  man  Angel  he  would  shut  his  cattle  off  the  laud ;  the 
drains  that  were  made  on  the  mountain  were  made  for  the  purpose 
of  draining  the  land;  witness  also  denied  that  he  had  refused  £5 
from  Gibbons,  but  admitted  that  another  man  had  gone  to  him 
with  the  witness  who  was  examined,  and  offered  to  pay  £5  of  the 
widow’s  rent,  provided  that  the  witness  would  not  come  down 
on  him,  as  he  was  about  taking  the  land  for  the  rent,  and  he 
refused ;  what  Father  Lavelle  said  about  the  grass  being  cut  off 
from  the  Shrah  tenants  was  not  true  ;  not  a  perch  of  the  mountain 
was  cut  off,  nor  the  company  never  gave  directions  on  the  subject ; 
to  the  witness’s  knowledge,  the  tenants  were  not  prevented  cutting 
turf. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C. — Tell  me,  were  not  those  proceedings  for  the 
.purpose  of  draining  the  tenants  ? — (a  laugh).  Draining  the  land. 

Were  you  offered  £5  ?  Never,  to  my  knowledge. 

Did  he  say  he  would  give  you  £5  ?  He  did. 

Did  you  believe  he  hadn’t  the  money  in  his  pocket  ?  I  could 
not  say. 


464 


APPENDIX 


You  refused  to  enter  into  any  bargain  with  him  at  all  about  ti  e 
£5?  Certainly. 

Mr.  M'Cullagh  was  then  examined  by  Sergeant  Dowse  in 
reference  to  his  interview  with  Major  Knox,  which  he  said  took 
place  before  the  publication  of  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter. 

Mr.  Falkiner,  Q.C.,  then  replied  on  the  part  of  the  defendant. 
He  said  : — May  it  please  your  lordship,  gentlemen,  it  would  be 
the  merest  affectation  on  my  part  if,  on  rising  at  the  close  of  this 
most  important  trial,  I  were  to  pretend  to  you  an  air  of  unconcern  ; 
or,  for  a  moment,  seek  to  conceal  the  throbs  of  sympathy  which, 
throughout  this  trial,  have  penetrated  the  humble  individual  who 
now  rises  to  address  you.  There  are  great  interests  at  issue  in 
this  case.  They  were  put  in  a  triple  form  by  my  able  friend  who 
addressed  you  on  the  same  side  yesterday,  and  I  don’t  think  that 
anybody  who  heard  him  saying  that  here  you  were  empanelled, 
and  we  are  engaged  in  a  solemn  duty  which  bears  special  reference 
to  the  administration  of  justice— to  the  liberty,  and  peace,  and 
prosperity  of  this  country—  could  feel  that  he  had  transcended  in 
the  slightest  degree  the  importance  of  the  occasion.  Gentlemen, 
if  it  were  not  that  my  judgment  has  been  coerced — I  may  almost 
say  against  my  will — into  an  acknowledgment  that  many  of  the 
doings  and  dealings  of  the  Land  Investment  Company  are  of  that 
character,  that  have  transpired  in  the  course  of  this  trial,  that  public 
justice  requires  that  the  light  of  day  should  be  thrown  upon  them, 
I  would  be  able  to  speak  in  language  of  the  most  unqualified 
regret  that  this  action  should  ever  have  been  brought  to  court.  I 
can  freely  say  so  in  speaking  for  the  defendant.  Usually  a  de¬ 
fendant  has  nothing  to  gain  by  defending  an  expensive  action  in  a 
court  of  justice — least  of  all  a  man  like  Major  Knox,  who  is 
engaged  with  a  vast  responsibility  upon  him,  and  with  multitudi¬ 
nous  and  overwhelming  duties  cast  upon  him  in  his  position  as  the 
conductor  of  a  great  public  journal.  Little  has  he  to  gain  by 
defending  such  a  case.  I  might  further  say  on  his  behalf  that  I 
think  it  might  have  been  fairer  if  the  gentleman  who  wrote  these 
letters,  and  whose  name  never  was  concealed,  had  been  made  the 
real  defendant  in  this  case.  You  have  heard  Major  Knox 
examined  before  you  to-day.  My  able,  my  eloquent,  and  power¬ 
ful  friend,  Serjeant  Dowse,  referred  to  a  passage  in  Shakespeare, 
when  talking  of  the  power  of  the  fourth  estate,  and  said  that  if  a 
giant’s  strength  was  possessed,  it  was  tyrannous  to  use  it  as  a 
giant.  You  have  heard  the  evidence  of  Major  Knox  here  to-day. 
He  showed  you  that  all  he  had  done  in  this  case  had  been  in  the 
performance  of  what  I  before  called  his  multitudinous  and  heavy 
duties.  He  has  given  a  fair  field  for  the  discussion  of  great  public 
questions,  affecting  the  deepest  interests  of  his  country  and  his 
fellow-countrymen.  That  was  what  he  did.  Why  did  not  Mr. 
M‘Cnllagh  bring  his  action  against  Father  Lavelle  ?  I  heard  my 
friend,  Serjeant  Dowse,  speak  of  Father  Lavelle,  -I  would  not  say 
in  unkind  language,  but  I  might  say,  in  a  slight  tone  of  disparage¬ 
ment.  Gentlemen,  I  suppose  Father  Lavelle  has  his  faults.  In 


appendix. 


465 


saying  so/ 1  admit  he  is  a  man,  but  amongst  these  faults,  to 
take  the  part  of  an  anonymous  slanderer  is  not  to  be  counted. 
Amongst  his  faults  he  does  not  possess  that  one,  which  we,  in 
Ireland,  consider  one  of  the  meanest  vices — the  want  of  courage. 
Plis  worst  enemy  never  could  say  that  he  had  said  anything. of 
him,  wdiether  right  or  wrong,  that  he  was  not  prepared  to  stand 
by  ;  and  it  is  proved  over  and  over  again  in  this  case  that  Father 
Lavelle  asked  that  he  should  be  defendant — that  he  said  he  was 
ready  to  fight  the  battle,  if  a  battle  was  to  be  fought — that  he 
thought  it  was  better  he  should  fight  the  battle,  ancl  that  Major 
Ivnox  ought  not  to  be  the  person,  who,  at  his  own  expense,  and 
without  security,  as  he  has  sworn,  after  performing  a  duty,  which 
he  did  voluntarily,  to  come  forward  to  perform  another  as  de¬ 
fendant,  which,  I  admit,  is  somewhat  against  his  will.  But  it  is 
not  for  such  a  selfish  reason  that  I  was  about  to  say,  a  moment 
ago,  that  my  feeling,  at  the  commencement  of  the  action,  was  one 
of  almost  unmingled  regret.  I  have  a  feeling  for  one  who,  I 
trust,  will  still  permit  me  to  call  him  a  man  with  whose  acquaint¬ 
ance  I  am  honored — I  mean  the  plaintiff,  Mr.  M‘Cuilagh.  I 
cannot  but  think  that  if  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  wdiose  name  was  ushered 
in  jmsterday  by  Mr.  Heron,  as  that  of  an  able  and  conscientious, 
and  an  amiable  man — I  cannot  but  think — I  believe,  if  I  may 
express  my  humble  belief  before  you — that  had  he  known  the  facts 
that  were  to  be  proved  in  this  case,  it  would  never  have  been 
instituted  in  his  name.  I  confess  it  was  with  the  most  extreme 
satisfaction  that  I  heard  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  yesterday  casting  off  at 
least  the  moral  responsibility  of  those  deeds,  almost  everyone  of 
which,  aye,  everyone  of  which,  was  done  without  knowledge  on 
his  part.  At  the  same  time,  he  (Mr.  Falkiner)  contended  that 
the  plaintiff  wras  responsible  for  the  acts  of  his  agent,  whom  he 
had  employed.  When  he  listened  to  witness  after  witness  telling 
stories — some  of  them  oft-told  tales — of  the  miseries  of  the  poor 
tenants,  he  was  reminded  of  wThat  he  had  read  long  ago  from  the 
pen  of  Maria  Edgeworth,  of  O’Hara,  Gerald  Griffin,  and  from 
the  pen  of  one  who  had  lately  departed  from  amongst  them — 
William  Carleton — who  had  expended  the  forces  of  their  genius 
and  the  power  of  their  literary  talent  in  describing  the  misery 
that  in  time  past  those  wretched  tenauts  had  suffered  through 
the  under  agents,  acting  in  the  name  and  armed  with  the  legal 
protections  that  surrounded  their  high-named  employers.  They 
knew  little  of  the  district  of  Partry  until  the  Land  Investment  Com¬ 
pany  came  into  possession — that  company  that  was  got  up  upon 
purely  philanthropic  principles,  and  which  immediately  commenced 
by  raising  the  rents  of  the  poor  tenants.  He  could  not  help 
referring  to  the  famous  speech  of  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  in  July,  1866, 
in  which  he  said  :  “  Will  not  these  people,  uneasy,  unsettled,  and 
discontented,  become  happy  and  industrious,  and  as  interested  in 
maintaining  the  peace  of  the  country  as  the  queen  herself  ? 
Will  such  men  join  a  Fenian  movement?  Will  they  listen  to 
unprincipled  agitators  ?  Never  ;  because  they  have  a  stake  in 

2  G 


466 


APPENDIX. 


the  country,  and  all  their  prospects  depend  on  peace  and  upholding 
the  law.  Will  not  these  people,  and  their  children,  and  children's 
children,  bless  the  day  that  this  company  was  formed  to  give  them 
what  I  believe  no  parliament  will  ever  give—  fixity  of  tenure?” 
Mr.  Brett  was  sent  down  to  Partly,  in  1866,  to  make  a  report  on 
the  place,  and  would  it  be  attempted  to  confront  his  evidence 
with  that  of  Father  Lavelle,  as  to  the  condition  of  the  tenantry 
and  the  place,  all  his  visits,  if  put  together,  not  amounting  to  a 
week?  One  of  the  great  issues  in  this  case,  as  opened  by  Serjeant 
Dowse,  was  whether  or  not  it  was  true  that  this  benevolent  and 
philanthropic  and  philosophically  limited  company  had  won  the 
affections  of  the  people  until  the  turbulent  agitator — the  priest 
— came  forward  amongst  them. 

Serjeant  Dowse — T  never  said  a  word  about  a  turbulent  agita¬ 
tor — (laughter) — or  a  disparaging  word  of  Father  Lavelle. 

Mr.  Falkiner — I  am  very  glad  of  the  interruption,  aud  perhaps 
it  would  have  been  as  fair  if  my  learned  friend  had  not  inter¬ 
rupted  me. 

Serjeant  Dowse — I  have  a  character  to  preserve. 

Mr.  Falkiner — Well,  my  learned  friend  did  not  use  the  word  ; 
but  if  1  am  to  be  called  in  question  for  every  paraphrase  of  mine, 
any  little  power  that  is  in  me  will  be  taken  away.  I  will  tell  you, 
though,  what  my  learned  friend  did  say,  and  I  will  show  that  the 
interruption  now  is  just  as  valuable  as  interruptions  usually  are, 
and  which  at  best  are  but  irregular.  I  will  show  you — and  your 
.  own  memories  will  bear  me  out — that  what  my  learned  friend 
did  was  this  : — He  described  to  you  a  prosperous  tenantry*  whose 
affections  had  been  won  by  this  benevolent  association,  and  then 
in  language,  not  that  which  I  had  used,  but  in  that  of  inuendo  or 
paraphrase,  which  he  will  not  let  me  use,  he  did  suggest  that 
Father  Lavelle  had  come  forward,  not  as  a  peacemaker,  but  to 
disturb  the  peace  which  had  already  existed.  I  can  well  under¬ 
stand  my  learned  friend  saying  he  has  a  character,  and  has  every 
reason  for  saying  so,  and  he  has  a  perfect  right  to  say  he  did  not 
use  the  words. 

Serjeant  Dowse — I  said  the  peace  was  disturbed  by  circum¬ 
stances  over  which  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  no  control.  Perhaps  I 
think  as  much  of  Father  Lavelle  as  you  do. 

The  Chief  Justice — I  think  we  had  better  pi'oceed. 

Mr.  Falkiner  resumed — Gentlemen,  when  this  company  first 
had  taken  possession  of  the  estate  of  Port  Royal,  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Lavelle,  as  he  stated  in  one  of  his  letters  of  the  27th  of  January, 
felt  towards  them  feelings  of  considerable  kindliness  and  welcome. 
He  thought  they  had  well  come,  and  he  gave  them  a  welcome  ac¬ 
cordingly.  He  says  for  awhile  they  had  his  best  wishes.  He  was 
delighted  with  the  company’s  programme  of  helping  the  tenants, 
and  converting  their  tenancies  into  fee-farm.  The  halcyon  pictures 
drawn  in  that  prospectus  seemed  to  have  lighted  up  the  horizon  of 
Partry,  and  Patrick  Lavelle,  amongst  others,  in  the  same  way  as 
some  of  the  more  gentle  shareholders,  believed  in  the  prospectus. 


APPENDIX. 


467 


Bat  taking  1866  as  the  date  of  the  possession  of  the  company, 
there  was  a  peculiarly  inclement  winter.  The  season  of  1866  and 
1867  was  one  of  peculiar  hardship.  They  were  always  a  hard- 
tried  race.  Such  was  the  effect  of  that  season  that  the  people  had 
no  means  of  supporting  themselves  with  the  soil.  And,  gentle¬ 
men,  when  you  heard  of  Indian  meal  being  carried  down  in  large 
quantities,  I  don’t  know  whether  all  of  you  saw  the  great  signifi¬ 
cance  of  that  fact,  because  in  bringing  down  a  grain  reared  in 
another  hemisphere,  you  can  well  understand  how  it  was  given  by 
charity  or  purchased  by  the  tenants  themselves.  And  what  are 
the  surplus  profits  of  the  tenants  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the 
body  aud  soul  together  ?  What  means  have  they  of  purchasing 
the  foreign  commodity  and  means  of  food?  Gentlemen,  the  con¬ 
sequence  of  that  was  this  :  their  own  agriculture  or  arable  por¬ 
tions  of  land  were  no  longer  able  to  support  them.  The  company 
themselves  seem  to  have  carried  meal  to  the  district,  although 
there  was  payment  afterwards  exacted  for  it,  mingled  with  law 
costs.  Father  Lavelle  brought  down  nearly  £500  worth  of  meal 
himself,  though  a  portion  of  it  was  not  exactly  for  persons  within 
the  ambit  of  Iris  cure.  I  come  now  to  May,  1867,  because  I 
will  endeavor  to  pass  over  unimportant  spaces  of  time,  and  thus 
relieve  the  case  of  what  is  not  essential  for  your  consideration.  In 
consequence  of  the  severity  of  the  season  through  which  those 
poor  people  passed,  they  were  unable  to  meet  their  rent  due  the 
following  November.  All  admit  that  this  was  a  season  of  dire 
distress,  and  that  distress  could  be  only  qualified  by  describing  it 
as  chronic.  Let  the  cogent  fact  be  known  that  in  this  island,  and 
in  that  bleak,  western  district,  it  was  necessary  to  have  grain 
carried  from  another  part  of  the  globe.  That  fact  makes  it  im¬ 
possible  for  anybody  to  deny  that  deep  distress  pervaded  the 
mountain  of  Partry  at  this  season .  The  May  rent  could  not  be 
met,  and  the  November  rent  became  due.  Father  Lavelle,  who 
had  been  revelling  in  those  beautiful  pictures  drawn  for  him  in 
the  prospectus,  and  possibly  translating  these  bright  promises  into 
the  Irish  language  that  the  people  might  understand  them — for  he 
stated  he  did  impart  to  the  people  what  he  believed  to  be  the  pur¬ 
poses  of  the  company,  and  used  his  influence  amongst  them  that 
they  would  make  no  opposition  to  the  acts  of  the  company,  but 
to  give  up  possession  on  the  faith  of  these  promises,  assured  as  he 
was  that  the  company  meant  what  they  said.  But,  gentlemen, 
an  extraordinary  revulsion  of  feeling  takes  place  in  his  mind  when 
he  finds  those  miserable  people,  in  the  season  of  their  sadness  and 
distress,  visited  with  processes  of  ejectment  for  non-payment  of 
rent.  A  year’s  rent  had  become  due  on  the  1st,  and  it  was  fol¬ 
lowed  by  a  process  of  ejectment  on  the  2nd.  On  the  day  follow¬ 
ing  the  rent  accruing  due,  those  miserable  countrymen  arid  coun¬ 
trywomen  of  ours  are  visited  with  processes  of  ejectment  for  non¬ 
payment  of  rent.  In  addition,  we  find  heaped  on  them  the  costs 
of  litigation.  Ten  shillings,  eleven  shillings,  and  fourteen 
shillings,  is  little  to  the  Land  Investment  Company  (Limited), 


APPENDIX. 


4^3 

whose  capital  is  a  million.  But  the  poor  tenant  of  Partry,  who 
pays  his  £2  and  £3  a-year  for  his  little  holding,  is  to  pay,  in  addi¬ 
tion,  14s.  law  costs.  I  would  not  trust  myself  to  enlarge  on  such 
a  topic,  but  I  will  leave  it  to  the  consideration  of  the  generous 
men  who  are  empanelled  to  try  this  case.  Proudfoot  insinuated 
that  they  did  not  want  the  Indian  meal,  which  the  hand  of  charity 
had  extended  to  them,  but  that  in  the  abundance  of  their  wealth 
they  flung  it  to  the  pigs.  That  was  a  statement  which  no  one  dared 
to  sanction  by  an  oath.  Gentlemen,  I  say  that,  according  to  the 
principles  of  human  nature,  you  cannot  do  justice  in  this  case, 
unless  you  realize  to  a  certain  extent,  and  that  must  be  done  by 
the  divine  human  faculty  of  imagination,  the  position  of  the  man 
who  wrote  that  letter.  The  notices  to  quit  and  ejectments  were 
served,  and  law  costs  were  imposed.  The  year  1868  passed  on¬ 
ward,  and  then  came  the  winter  again,  and  with  it  the  necessities 
which  are  chronic  at  Partry.  Christmas  came,  and  the  joy- bells 
were  heard.  It  was  the  time  of  peace  and  good  will  to  men.  But 
the  morning  came,  and  with  it  a  distress  into  the  house  of  poor 
Henaghan.  I  wish  that  word  distress  was  for  ever  banished  from 
our  law.  It,  too,  signifies  human  agony,  misery,  and  sorrow. 
Scarcely  had  the  sounds  of  the  Christinas  bells  ceased,  when  the 
ejectment  was  served,  and  the  hunting  of  the  wren  commenced  in 
Partry.  In  that  great  mountain  parish  of  3,000  souls,  where 
there  are  but  three  gentlemen,  the  Established  Church  rector,  the 
doctor,  and  parish  priest,  the  people,  who  are,  without  exception, 
of  his  religion,  came  to  the  parish  priest,  who  was  their  counsellor 
all  through.  Gentlemen,  I  am  not  a  Roman  Catholic  ;  I  am  here 
in  the  position  of  an  advocate,  and  do  not  want  to  curry  favor 
with  anybody ;  but  I  must  say  the  man  must  have  a  heart  of 
bigotry,  which  I  do  not  envy,  who  can  shut  his  eyes  to  the  posi¬ 
tion  occupied  by  a  man  in  the  position  of  a  priest  in  a  district  of 
so  much  sorrow  and  suffering.  He  heard  of  the  emigration,  and 
saw  the  wretched  people  fleeing  from  the  homes  of  their  ancestors. 
He  witnessed  their  sufferings,  and  saw  that  sorrow  and  woe  were 
gathering  again  round  Partry.  In  a  spirit  which  I  stand  here  to 
vindicate,  he  wrote  that  letter  of  the  26th  December,  1S68.  1  do 

not  know  what  your  views  on  political  economy  may  be ;  but  I 
heard  it  said  by  the  students  of  almanacs,  that  the  population  are 
to  be  transferred  elsewhere.  I  can  understand  the  priest  amongst 
these  poor  people.  I  can  understand  that  he  rather  gathers  his 
principles  of  political  philanthropy  from  the  sources  of  the  heart ; 
and  when  the  wisdom  of  the  heart  is  joined  with  that  of  the 
brain,  it  becomes  a  loftier  philanthropy  than  that  which  is  based 
merely  on  arithmetic.  He  read  Goldsmith,  and  thought,  perhaps 
there  was  wisdom  and  philosophy  in  him,  when  he  says — 

“El  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 

Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay  ; 

But  a  bold  peasantry,  their  country’s  pride. 

When  once  destroyed  can  never  be  supplied.” 


APPENDIX. 


469 


Gentlemen,  if  in  that  spirit  he  wrote  that  letter,  everyone  can 
understand  he  was  no  had  man  who  entertained  such  notions  of 
philosophy.  The  greater  part  of  the  letter  is  not  on  the  record. 
Their  case  here,  which  in  some  degree  partook  of  the  nature  of  a 
plea  of  justification,  was  true.  It  went  further,  it  said  that  portion 
of  it  which  did  not  state  facts,  was  a  fair  and  reasonable  comment. 
The  question  for  the  jury  to  decide  was,  how  much  was  true,  and 
#with  regard  to  the  rest,  was  it  not  a  fair  and  reasonable  comment. 
Counsel  read  portion  of  Mr.  Lavelle’s  letter,  stating  that  the  ten¬ 
ants  had  been  deprived  of  their  mountain  outlet.  Was  that 
proved  or  not  ?  Who  had  proved  that  ?  Why,  the  witnesses  for 
the  plaintiff.  He  hoped  they  understood  that  part  of  the  case,  for 
that  open  mountain  of  Derassa  grazed  for  centuries  the  cattle  of 
the  tenantry  of  Partry  in  the  times  of  the  Gildeas.  He  had  been 
told  that  there  had  been  a  straight  striping  by  a  man  named 
Kenny  some  years  ago  ;  these  people  paying  so  much  per  annum 
for  their  lowland  farms,  to  which  were  attached  the  right  of  com¬ 
monage  over  God’s  free  hills — that  was  their  tenure.  He  did  not 
mean  to  say  that  the  law,  arming  this  company  with  its  powers, 
could  not  have  enabled  them,  at  the  end  of  a  year  or  year  and  a  half, 
to  have  terminated  these  tenures  and  deprived  the  people  of  both 
lowland  and  upland  together.  If  there  was  that  tenure,  and  he 
was  not  there  to  say  whether  it  was  right  or  wrong,  if  there  was 
that  means  by  which  the  inhabitants  could  be  expelled  at  the  end 
of  a  fixed  period,  in  the  name  of  God  let  them  have  that  fixed 
period  before  they  were  driven  out.  There  was  no  notice  to  quit, 
because  that  was  a  legal  engine,  and  there  was  no  ejectment,  for 
that  was  the  second  legal  engine  when  the  machinery  became  com¬ 
plex.  The  letter  wrent  on  to  say  that  what  had  been  done  was  a 
violation  of  the  law.  And  was  it  not  ?  Without  form  of  these 
letters  from  her  gracious  majesty  the  queen,  the  writs  of  her  high 
courts,  or  even  of  the  chairman  of  the  county,  or  any  form  of  law, 
one-third  of  Derassa  was  taken  possession  of  for  his  own  purpose 
by  the  chairman  of  this  company.  He  believed  that  in  doing  so 
the  plaintiff  did  not  understand  he  was  doing  wrong,  for  his  ac¬ 
counts  of  the  tenantry  came  from  Proudfoot  and  his  myrmidons, 
who  made  him  do  it,  because  they  falsely  represented  that  the 
people  had  plenty.  Here  was  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  a  wine  merchant 
in  Dublin,  who  knew  as  much  about  the  people  of  this  country  as 
the  tenantry  of  Derassa  knew  about  the  wines  of  Oporto.  He 
believed  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  did  not  know  he  was  aggravating  the 
misery  they  had  already  down  there.  In  the  cross-examinati6n 
the  only  point  sought  to  be  made  was,  that  Father  Lavelle  called 
the  mountain  worthless,  and  then,  that  being  so,  it  was  taken  away 
— therefore  he  was  to  be  considered  inconsistent.  His  learned 
friend  knew  what  a  great  R.oman  poet  said — the  unfortunate 
cottiers  had  nothing,  and  that  miserable  nothing  was  taken  away 
from  them.  Everything  in  that  had  been  proved,  and  was  it  be¬ 
cause  Mr.  Proudfoot  said  to  the  contrary  they  were  not  to  believe 
it  ?  He  had  never  seen  him  before,  and  he  did  not  wish  to  say 


470 


APPENDIX. 


anything  against  him  except  what  had  been  proved  in  this  case. 
Mr.  Heron  said  he  did  not  know  what  the  word  Proudfoot  meant. 
He  (counsel)  said  he  was  the  proudfoot  put  by  this  company  on 
the  necks  of  these  miserable  serfs,  and  that  was  the  etymology  of 
it.  (Laughter.)  The  case  made  on  the  other  side  was,  that  the 
tenants  were  unable  to  pay  the  rents,  and,  therefore,  it  was  neces- 
sary  they  should  serve  processes  on  the  2nd  November,  for  the  rent 
due  on  the  1st;  and,  forsooth,  the  way  they  were  assisted  to  pay 
these  rents  was  to  take  away  several  hundred  acres  from  them 
at  Derassa,  which  were  the  means  of  maintaining  them.  It  was 
said  this  was  not  done,  and  he  heard  with  astonishment  the 
miserable  point  attempted  to  be  made  when  that  girl  Ley  don  was 
produced,  with  reference  to  the  cattle  being  driven  off  the  moun¬ 
tain.  She  was  asked  was  she  sure  that  the  herd  was  not  her 
father’s  landlord,  and  it  was  sought  to  be  shown  that  young 
Comisky  was  only  acting  for  his  father  in  that  capacity.  Who  be¬ 
lieved  that  ?  Comisky  said  he  only  acted  as  herd,  and  the  reason 
he  put  off  these  people  of  Shrah,  whose  cattle  had  been  grazing 
there  since  Noah’s  Flood,  and  of  Derassa  since  William  the 
Conqueror,  was,  that  they  wTere  trespassers,  and  had  no  right  at 
all.  They  had  heard  witness  after  witness  upon  that  point,  and 
were  able  clearly  to  come  to  a  decision  upon  it.  Counsel  proceeded 
to  read  from  the  letter,  which,  he  said,  was  perfectly  justified 
by  the  facts  given  in  evidence.  The  great  moral  question  in  this 
case  was,  whether  Proudfoot  wras  right  in  acting  this  way — 
whether  the  jury  would  declare  themselves  perfectly  satisfied  with 
what  was  done,  or  whether  Father  Lavelle,  who  knew  the  people, 
told  the  truth.  It  was  said  that  the  tenants  had  freely  consented 
to  the  course  pursued.  If  that  was  so,  why  were  there  those  inter¬ 
mediate  documents?  Mr.  Heron  had  said  those  documents  had 
gone  in  triplets,  but  he  found  a  fourth,  which  had  been  omitted,  to 
cap  the  climax.  They  all  commenced  with  a  document  which  said — 
“I give  you  notice  that  at  the  end  of  six  months  you  are  to  leave 
this  place.”  Was  that  the  voluntary  wish  of  the  people  of  Partry  ? 
Why,  according  to  law,  the  notice  to  quit  could  be  only  given 
from  the  time  the  tenancy  terminated,  so  that  some  persons  might 
have  eighteen  months’  notice,  while  others  only  six.  Another 
document  was  executed  with  reference  to  the  terminancy  of  the 
tenancy  on  the  1st  of  November.  That,  of  course,  made  it  a 
fixed  holding,  but  rendered  the  occupants  trespassers,  the  day 
after  the  1st  of  November  was  passed.  That  was  the  second  of 
the  documents,  but  they  were  not  satisfied  with  that.  The 
notion  of  supposing  that  either  Mr.  Oldham,  or  Mr.  Meldon,  or 
anybody  else  who  knew  anything,  was  a  party  to  these  docu¬ 
ments,  was  out  of  the  question,  They  had  not  heard  of  the  hero  of 
these  documents  yet,  by  which  the  unfortunate,  benighted  tenants 
consented  to  give  up  their  little  holdings,  and  become  mere  care¬ 
takers  to  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  with  the  rope  of  serfdom  round  their 
necks.  These  men,  in  all  their  ignorance  and  darkness,  were 
supposed  to  have  done  that  voluntarily  ;  but  why,  he  would  ask, 
was  it  necessary  if  they  were  ready  to  make  the  change,  to  drive 


APPENDIX. 


471 


them  into  a  condition  of  despair  ?  Because  the  law  of  the  land 
was,  that  a  caretaker  could  not  maintain  a  prosecution  for  forcible 
entry.  Once  a  man  said  he  was  a  caretaker  he  became  a  servant, 
and  at  that  moment  his  greatest  privileges  as  a  citizen,  of  having  a 
roof  over  his  head,  ceased,  and  he  was  henceforth  in  the  position 
of  a  kenneled  dog  or  a  stabled  horse,  to  be  driven  out  by  the  force 
of  the  law  of  the  country — by  the  force  which  model  Scully 
brought  upon  the  scene— by  that  force  which  their  wily  plans, 
backed  by  wealth  and  influence,  had  given  them.  That  was  the 
position  of  those  men  who  signed  as  caretakers.  He  could  not  ima¬ 
gine  a  people  more  prostrate  than  these  50  or  GO,  or  SO  or  90  persons 
who  signed  these  papers  converting  them  from  their  position  as 
tenants  of  land,  which  they  inherited  for  thousands  of  years  by 
their  ancestors,  into  mere  caretakers.  If  it  was  done  by  consent, 
then  they  had  a  picture,  which  he  was  glad  to  say  was  not  often 
presented  in  Ireland,  of  a  happy  tenantry  pouring  forth  their  bless¬ 
ings  on  the  land,  relinquishing  all  their  rights  for  the  pleasure  of 
becoming  caretakers.  He  would  ask  them  in  all  solemnity  to  read 
the  documents,  and  consider  the  picture  of  these  people,  on  their 
knees,  without  a  stake  in  the  country,  such  as  he  had  described, 
with  an  unfixity  of  tenure  such  as  had  never  before  been  heard  of. 
Had  that  document  been  presented  to  them  that  the  sign  of  the 
cross  might  be  placed  to  them  as  their  marks  in  acknowledgment 
of  rent  of  £7,000,  they  must  have  signed  them  or  go  out.  He  did 
not  think  that  the  object  of  the  company  was  so  much  to  drive  or 
hurt  these  people  themselves,  as  to  get  up  a  large  rental,  and  then, 
as  land-jobbers,  bring  the  estate  into  the  market  and  lease  it  to 
others,  the  new  purchasers  to  put  on  the  driving  process.  They  were 
told  the  people  voluntarily  yielded  to  this  agreement,  and  the  man 
Malone  was  put  forward  to  prove  this.  He  was  an  Irish  speaker. 
He  said  he  knew  the  meaning  of  the  document,  and  yet,  when  he 
was  asked  what  a  lodger  meant,  he  said  he  did  not  know.  He  was 
asked  what  was  his  new  rent,  and  he  said  £2,  but  when  the  docu¬ 
ment  was  handed  in  it  turned  out  to  be  £4  7s  6d.  Was  that  a 
consent  ?  Would  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  say  that  was  a  consent  which  he, 
as  an  honorable  man,  would  ask  to  bind  them  ?  When  that  man 
signed  the  three  documents  was  he  a  person  who  really  understood 
what  he  was  about  ?  He  (counsel)  asked  did  he  know  that  if,  in 
dispensing  the  hospitality  of  the  Irish  peasant,  he  was  to  take  a 
lodger  into  his  house,  he  would  have  to  pay  £10  penalty?  He 
(Mr.  JFalkiner)  did  not  know  whether  they  were  afraid  of  the 
lodger  franchise  getting  down  to  Mayo  or  not,  but  it  was  quite 
plain  the  man  just  understood  as  much  in  putting  that  cross  to 
the  paper  as  one  of  the  kyloes  would  if  her  horn  was  taken  out, 
put  in  an  ink  bottle,  and  drawn  across  it.  (Laughter).  The 
charge  against  Mr.  M'Cullagli  of  having  his  cattle  feeding  on  the 
grass  of  the  tenants  was  perfectly  true ;  but  he  was  sure  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  did  not  know  what  he  was  doing.  The  cattle  were 
grazing  there — they  had  no  right  to  be  in  it,  and  the  law  was 
violated,  so  that  the  document  was  strictly  true. 


472 


APPENDIX. 


Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  said  that  his  interview  with  Major  Knox 
was  before  Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter  was  published.  Major  Knox 
said  that  was  entirely  a  mistake,  and  that  the  interview  must 
have  been  on  either  the  12th  or  13th  of  January,  while  Mr.  Proud¬ 
foot’s  letter  was  received  at  the  Irish  Times  office  on  the  10th, 
and  published  on  the  11th  of  January.  It  was  clear  Major  Knox 
was  correct  in  this,  because  everything  led  to  that  belief  ;  and  not 
the  least  of  all  was  the  letter  written  by  Major  Knox,  as  long  ago 
as  the  15th  of  March  last,  to  Mr.  Oldham.  Counsel  then  read 
the  letter  referred  to  already  in  evidence,  and  directed  attention 
especially  to  the  following  portion  of  it :  “  The  first  letter  from 
Mr.  Lavelle  appeared  on  the  4th  of  January,  and  on  the  10th  of 
that  month  a  full  and  very  strong  letter,  in  reply,  was  received 
from  Mr.  Prouclfoot,  the  (company’s)  local  agent,  which  was  at 
once  inserted  in  the  Irish  Times.  On  the  13th  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
himself  called  on  me,  and  I  told  him  if  he  wished  any  explanation, 
not  only  should  it  be  published,  but,  if  he  desired  it,  as  I  was  most 
anxious  to  pay  any  compliment  to  himself,  or  to  serve  the  com¬ 
pany,  it  should  be  done  in  the  form  of  a  leading  article.  At  his 
request  I  instructed  one  of  the  editors  to  do  so,  and  an  ai'ticie, 
which  I  thought  complimentary  to  the  company  and  Mr.  M‘Cul- 
lagh,  appeared  on  the  14th.”  That,  he  (counsel)  thought,  settled 
the  question.  Major  Knox’s  statement  was  evidently  the  true 
one,  and  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s  inoorrect.  But  much  did  not  turn  on 
this  point.  The  real  question  was,  did  not  Major  Knox  faithfully 
discharge  his  duty  as  the  head  of  a  public  journal  in  allowing  the 
Irish  Times  to  be  the  battle-ground  for  this  fight  to  be  carried 
on  in,  and  that  privilege  having  been  accepted,  this  action  ought 
never  to  have  been  brought.  Mr.  Proudfoot  wrote  an  angry 
letter — a  libel,  in  fact,  as  had  since  been  proved — to  which  he 
would  not  refer  further  than  to  state  that  Major  Knox  was  de¬ 
termined  to  give  fair  play. 

On  the  I4ch,  he  directed  to  be  put  in  a  leading  article,  and 
added  the  names  of  the  directors,  and  paid  them  the  highest  com¬ 
pliment  he  could,  by  placing  them  high  in  the  commercial  world, 
so  that,  if  they  had  done  wrong,  the  high  influence  of  their  names 
might  spread  out  its  branches  to  hide  the  baneful  effects  of  the 
upas  tree.  He  did  that,  and  it  was  all  he  could  do.  He  had  now 
done  with  the  first  alleged  libel,  and  approached  another  step  in 
the  case.  As  Major  Knox  intimated  to  Mr.  M‘Cullagli  as  a  likely 
thing  to  occur,  Father  Lavelle  reverted  to  the  charge  on  the  27th 
of  January,  and  exposed  the  proceedings  in  reference  to  law  costs. 
The  law  was  brought  forward  against  the  miserable  people  in  the 
shape  of  processes,  in  order  to  add  to  their  rent  the  accumulation 
of  law  costs,  and  in  that  way  the  great  name  of  the  law  of  Eng¬ 
land  was  known  through  Partry.  Father  Lavelle  was  right  in 
saying  these  poor  men  were  fleeced  by  unnecessary  law  costs. 
Was  it  necessary  to  make  a  £2  holder  pay  18s.  costs  ?  Was  that 
necessary  ?  Did  not  the  documents  prove  that  they  were  made 
pay  the  surveyor’s  fees  and  others  which  were  never  explained  ? 


APPENDIX. 


473 


Let  them  now  take  the  notice  to  quit,  and  he  would  ex-plain  what 
the  5s.  was  for.  Mr.  Johnston  asked  a  witness  what  was  the 
meaning  of  it,  but  he  could  not  tell.  He  (counsel)  now  wanted 
the  document  signed  by  Lord  Naught  on,  for  he  found  that  he  had 
signed  his  name  “Naughton”  in  baronial  style,  without  his 
Christian  name.  (Laughter.)  Counsel  then  read  the  notice,  and 
said  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  was  not 
answerable  for  the  act  of  his  myrmidon,  for  an  action  could  be 
taken  against  M‘Cullagh  on  that  distress  if  it  were  illegal,  which 
he  believed  it  was.  Why,  this  Lord  Naughton  ought  to  have  been 
at  the  vote  last  night.  (A  laugh.)  Well,  five  shillings  was 
charged  for  that  little  job.  Was  not  that  illegal  and  unnecessar}'- 
law  costs  ?  Five  shillings  added  to  the  rent  of  this  impoverished 
tenant.  How  was  that  to  be  made  out  ?  Was  this  miserable  drop 
of  the  heart’s  blood  to  be  dragged  out  of  these  people — these  fines 
and  penalties?  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  told  them  that  the  fourteen- 
shilling  matter  was  a  thing  that  he  could  not  justify — that  it  was 
a  matter  he  was  sorry  for.  Were  they  to  have  Proudfoot  come 
up  and  tell  them  that  these  people  were  not  to  be  believed  about 
the  drains,  because  he  said  the  drains  were  put  there  for  the 
benevolent  purpose  of  draining?  As  to  the  word  “robbery,”  he  said, 
used  in  the  language  of  indignation,  it  was  open  to  but  one  inter¬ 
pretation.  The  meaning  of  it  was  explained.  If  it  was  said  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  robbed,  no  one  would  believe  it,  but  if  it  was  said  that 
through  his  agents  property  was  taken  possession  of,  which  he  had 
no  light  to,  then  the  sense  of  robbery,  as  explained  in  this  letter, 
was  true.  That  was  the  meaning  of  the  word.  Mr.  Lavelle  told 
what  he  meant  in  the  next  sentence,  and  if  they  could  find  upon 
that  word  that  it  was  used  as  he  suggested,  they  would  give  that 
meaning  to  it  in  their  verdict.  The  same  word  was  applied  t<> 
Mr.  Gladstone  the  other  night,  and  he  (counsel)  was  not  one  to 
say  that  it  was  wrongly  applied  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  (Laughter.) 
He  now  came  to  the  last  of  these  letters — the  story  of  the  Widow 
Gibbons.  He  was  not  strong  enough  in  frame  to  go  through  this 
matter  as  it  required  to  be  dealt  with.  They  had  heard  the  pa¬ 
thetic  story  of  the  old  man  in  relation  to  that,  and  they  saw  how, 
when  he  was  cross-examined  by  counsel,  he  rose  to  a  higher  spirit 
than  he  had  ventured  on  when  interrogated  by  those  on  his  own 
side,  and  declared  that,  although  by  marriage  he  was  only  the 
nephew  of  this  poor,  old  woman,  lie  had  been  her  son  for  ten  years, 
and  that  when  his  last  shilling  was  given  to  him,  with  her  he 
would  divide  it.  He  was  ready  to  give  the  rent,  but  because  he 
wanted  to  get  some  sort  of  security  by  getting  some  of  the  land  in 
conacre  from  the  old  woman,  it  would  not  be  taken  from  him. 
There  was  the  money  of  the  widow  refused,  in  order  that  she  might 
the  better  be  made  an  outcast ;  and  10s.  costs  were  put  upon  her. 
He  believed  there  was  no  man  more  ignorant  of  that  than  Mr.  M‘Cul- 
lagh  till  yesterday,  for  he  was  certain  if  he  knew  it  he  would  not 
justify  it.  With  reference  to  the  story  of  the  Prophet  Nathan,  he 
should  remind  him  that  the  words  that  had  been  so  often  alluded 


474 


APPENDIX. 


to  in  this  case  came  from  sacred  sources,  and  they  were  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  man  of  God,  uttered  not  to  a  bad  man  but  to  a  good 
man.  They  were  uttered  to  the  good  man  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  home  conviction  to  him,  that  from  the  outbursts  of  a 
generous  heart  there  might  be  an  admission  that  no  mortal  knowing 
his  mortality  would  be  ashamed  to  admit.  David  said,  “You 
show  me  I  have  sinned  and  was  wrong,  and  I  admit  that  the  man 
who  does  these  things  is  worthy  of  death.”  The  king  said  unto 
Nathan,  “  I  have  greatly  sinned  before  the  Lord,”  and  Nathan 
said  unto  David,  “  The  Lord  hath  taken  away  thy  sin.”  Having 
quoted  the  authority  of  Chief  Justice  Cockburn  on  the  subject  of 
free  discussion  of  matters  of  public  interest,  the  learned  counsel 
concluded  asfolknvs  ; — Gentlemen,  we  have  now  proved  our  case, 
and  I  know  your  verdict  will  give  the  answer  to  my  assertion  that 
this  was  a  fair  comment.  We  have  proved  the  case  in  its  truth  ; 
but  if  there  be  a  little  transcendent  language — if  there  be  some 
angry  words  written  which  have  not  exactly  their  prototype  in 
the  evidence  sworn  on  the  table,  are  you,  the  guardians  of  the 
public  press — of  the  rights  of  free  discussion — to  mete  out  in  ten¬ 
der  scales  the  language  which  may,  perhaps,  have  been  used,  and 
to  say  here  is  a  word,  a  superlative  and  adjective,  or  a  strong  sub¬ 
stantive,  which  has  not  been  sworn  to  by  the  witnesses,  and  there¬ 
fore  we  hold  you  guilty,  and  hold  that  this  is  no  fair  comment. 
If  that  were  so,  perish  the  liberty  of  the  press  ;  for  if  a  man  is 
said  to  have  the  right  of  denouncing  wrong,  and  if  a  man  who  sees 
deeds  done  that  are  more  than  questionable,  wants  to  bring  them 
before  the  light  of  day,  then,  gentlemen,  is  it  with  the  “  Correct 
Letter  Writer  ”  before  him  that  he  is  to  sit  down,  or,  as  a  great  man 
said,  and  1,  a  weak  one,  adopt  his  words — is  he  to  have  a  counsel 
at  his  right  hand  and  an  attorney  at  his  left  ?  Gentlemen, when  the 
feelings  are  strong,  and  when  the  occasion  is  such  as,  according  to 
the  principles  of  our  common  human  nature,  makes  it  right  for  a 
worthy  and  good  man  that  the  feelings  should  be  strong— he  is  not 
to  be  held  accountable  for  the  gall  with  which  he  has  mixed  his  colors, 
and  he  is  not  to  be  accountable  if  he  has  allowed  the  heart  to  burst 
out  in  hot  language,  and  the  full  storm  of  emotion  to  find  vent  in 
a  spring-tide  of  honest  though  vehement  language,  nor  shall  he  be 
held  accountable  if  he  bursts  out  into  the  burning  words  which 
tyrants  quake  to  hear.  In  presuming  to  speak  on  this  lofty  topic 
— this  theme  of  the  right  of  the  public  press  to  criticize  with  free¬ 
dom — I  feel  that  I,  a  weak  man,  am  approaching  and  daring  with 
faltering  finger  to  touch  an  instrument  which  has  been  touched 
by  the  hands  of  the  mighty  masters  of  the  past,  and  when  I 
approach  it  I  shrink  back  terrified  at  my  own  audacity,  and  my 
memory  becomes  crowded  with  shadows  of  the  illustrious  dead.  I 
call  to  mind  the  great  speech  of  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  Eng¬ 
lish  eloquence — Lord  Ersldne — whose  shadow  seems  to  me  to  rise 
in  this  court  of  justice,  pre-eminent,  great,  and 'transcendent.  It 
was  the  speech  in  which  he  settled  this  law  of  libel,  for  his  thoughts 
were  turned  into  an  act  of  parliament  ere  many  years  had  passed, 


APIENDIX. 


476 


and  that  was  the  great  cause  in  which  at  once  he  vindicated  the 
right  of  free  discussion,  and,  by  a  strange  coincidence  it  appears  to 
me,  it  was  in  that  speech  that  he  drew  the  wondrous  picture  of  the 
savage  owner  of  the  soil  with  his  tomahawk  flung  on  the  ground, 
vindicating  his  possession  by  that  right  and  power  which  God 
had  given  him.  In  that  great  speech  these  two  mighty  topics  were 
put  forward  together  by  a  master  speaker,  and  the  language  in 
which  it  was  uttered  rolled  in  thunder  throughout  the  court-house, 
since  disused,  astonishing  hearts  that  are  long  since  sleeping  in  their 
grave ;  but  outside  the  precincts  of  that  court-house  it  rings  for  ever 
in  the  hearts  of  mankind  as  an  undying  echo.  I  do  not  dare,  weak 
as  I  am,  to  pursue  further  this  enlarging  topic.  I  ask  you  for  your 
verdict,  not  in  the  spirit  of  the  language  of  my  eloquent  friend  who 
spoke  yesterday — not  because  you  will  have  the  prayers  of  those 
poor  people — but  I  rise  to  a  higher  ground,  and  from  your  sense  of 
justice  I  demand  your  verdict  as  a  right,  not  seeking  it  as  a  favor. 
This  is  the  view  I  would  put  before  you  in  demanding  your  ver¬ 
dict.  I  ask  you  to  send  down  English  law  to  Partry  in 
another  form  than  that  in  which  it  has  been  known  there — not  by 
the  Christmas  visits  of  the  distrainer,  bringing  distress  into  the 
homes — not  by  the  notices  to  quit  and  miserable  legal  documents, 
and  those  mysterious  compacts  that  nobody  has  understood,  and 
no  one  has  ventured  to  explain  ;  but  that  they  may  know  the  Eng¬ 
lish  law,  and  so  become  loyal — for  that  is  the  meaning  of  the  word 
lover  of  the  law — by  finding  that  tie  English  law  is  not  altogether 
their  enemy.  I  have  heard  people  speaking  of  a  message  of  peace, 
and  that  it  is  to  be  worked  out  by  changes  in  laws  that  have  ex¬ 
isted  for  several  centuries.  Let  us  try  the  experiment  of  a  mes¬ 
sage  of  peace  by  giving  to  the  people  of  the  country  our  law  even 
as  it  stands.  Let  them  know  that  they  have  the  protection 
of  the  laws  of  England  as  well  as  they  have  those  tortures  to  which 
it  has  been  misused,  and  then  perhaps  you  will  make  them, 
in  a  higher  arid  holier  spirit,  better  understand  the  union  with 
that  great  country,  whose  ships  are  known  on  every  sea,  and  on 
whose  empire  the  sun  has  never  yet  been  known  to  set.*  When 
you  have  taught  them  these  things  you  will  have  made  them  loyal. 
Teach  them  the  lesson  that  in  a  case  in  which  their  rights  were 
considered  by  a  jury  of  Dublin  merchants  as  against  Mr.  M'Cul- 
lagh,  a  worthy  and  well-known  Dublin  merchant,  justice  would 
be  given  them  if  they  deserved  it,  and  that  we  can  all  live  in 
amity  under  a  common  sovereign.  The  peasantry  of  Derassa  and 
Shrah  and  the  other  townlands  shall  then  live  in  loyalty  and  love 
of  our  common  sovereign  and  empire,  and  become,  indeed,  Part 
Pee,  the  portion  of  our  queen.  (Loud  applause.) 

Mr.  Butt,  Q.  C.,  next  addressed  the  jury  on  the  part  of  the 
plaintiff.  He  said  he  was  aware  of  the  disadvantages  under  which 
he  rose  after  the  eloquent  addresses  of  his  learned  friends,  Mr. 
Heron  and  Mr.  Falkiner,  which  he  had  heard  with  delight  and 
satisfaction.  Not  only  did  he  feel  admiration  for  their  eloquence, 
lut  in  most  of  what  they  said  he  entirely  sympathized.  There 


476 


APPENDIX. 

I 

were  topics  in  tliis  case  very  well  calculated  to  carry  away  the 
feelings  of  the  jury  from  the  real  question  they  had  to  try. 
Those  topics  had  been  used,  he  was  going  to  say  with  dexterity, 
by  his  learned  friends,  but  that  would  convey  a  very  inadequate 
idea  of  the  admiration  he  felt  for  the  skill  and  power  with  which 
they  had  not  unfairly  used  those  topics.  The  issue  the  jury  had 
to  try  was,  whether  upon  the  individual  conduct  of  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh 
certain  passages  in  these  letters  were  fair  comments.  They  had 
not  to  try,  and  they  could  not  decide,  any  political  or  any  social 
questions  affecting  the  well-being  of  this  country.  They  could 
not  decide  and  they  had  not  to  try  whether  fixity  of  tenure  was 
a  good  thing  or  not.  He  had  his  own  opinions,  and  they  were 
very  strong  opinions,  upon  that  subject.  No  language  in  which 
his  learned  friends  could  express  their  opinions  upon  that  subject 
would  go  too  far  for  him.  Their  verdict  was  not  to  decide  any 
question  of  that  kind.  They  were  there  under  a  solemn  obliga¬ 
tion  to  do  justice  between  man  and  man.  He,  as  an  advocate, 
had  no  right  to  allow  his  own  opinions  to  influence  him  in 
the  discharge  of  his  duty  upon  a  question  that  did  not  affect  those 
opinions,  and  the  jury  had  no  right  to  allow  them  to  influence 
their  verdict.  Mr.  M'Ciillagh  had  brought  this  action  in  his  in¬ 
dividual  capacity.  It  was  not  an  actiou  for  a  libel  upon  the 
company,  and  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  had  studiously  and  carefully  ex¬ 
cluded  from  his  cause  of  action  everything  that  merely  canvassed 
the  conduct  of  the  company.  It  was  all  very  well  to  talk  of  the 
liberty  of  the  press,  but,  even  for  the  protection  of  the  liberty  of 
the  press,  jurors  had  most  important  duties  to  discharge,  when 
they  came  to  draw  a  line  that  separates  discussion  of  public 
conduct  from  assaults  upon  private  character ;  for  if  the  liberty  of 
the  press  degenerated  into  the  licentiousness  of  assailing  private 
character,  under  the  guise  of  discussing  public  conduct,  society 
would  soon  get  weary  of  the  liberty  of  the  press.  He  would  now 
endeavor  to  recall  their  minds  to  the  plain  facts  of  the  case.  It 
was  evident  that  the  Port  Itoyal  estate,  when  the  company  came 
into  possession  of  it  in  1866,  was  not  exactly  in  the  condition  in 
which  they  would  wish  to  see  Irish  land.  The  company  had  made 
a  provision  for  giving  to  their  tenants  fixity  of  tenure,  and  up  to 
the  present  time  they  had  not  violated  that  provision,  and  not  a 
single  tenant  had  been  evicted  from  the  estate.  It  was  said  that 
children  and  fools  should  never  see  half  done  work  ;  but  there  was 
another  eye  that  should  never  see  half  done  work — the  eye  of  an 
angry  and  excited  ecclesiastic — animated  by  strong,  and,  he  would 
say  for  Mr.  Lavelle,  honest  and  honorable  feelings.  That  was 
not  the  eye  that  should  look  upon  the  half  done  work  of  a  com¬ 
pany  that  undertook  to  put  this  estate  in  order,  and  their  work 
was  only  half  done  yet.  In  what  state  did  the  company  find  this 
estate  when  they  got  possession  ?  Cold  and  uncultivated — the 
tenants  living  on  the  system  of  Itundale,  with  their  land  in  com¬ 
mon — and  with  great  pastures  that  were  capable  of  being  made 
useful — hundreds  of  acres  unfenced  and  unreclaimed, and  wandered 


APPENDIX. 


4/  i 

over  and  overjby  the  sheep  and  cattle  of  ihe  tenants,  besides 
those  of  trespassers  from  a  distance.  He  (Mr.  Butt)  submitted 
the  company  had  a  legal  right  to  improve  their  estate.  The 
tenants  submitted  to  what  they  did,  and  it  was  done  without  the 
remonstrance  of  the  parish  priest.  They  consented  by  agreement 
to  become  the  caretakers  of  the  company,  and  by  that  act  the 
company  unquestionably  acquired  the  right  of  evicting  every  one 
of  them  at  a  moment’s  notice.  The  learned  counsel  continued  :  I 
disapprove  of  that  power  in  the  hands  of  any  man.  Some  of  you 
know  my  remedy.  Wild  as  these  tenants  are,  and  uneducated  as 
they  are,  I  would  give  to  every  one  of  them,  by  the  strong  hand 
of  legislation,  the  right  to  hold  their  land  at  a  rent  fixed  by 
government  valuation,  and  leases  that  would  give  them  an  interest 
in  it.  That  is  not  the  law.  I  believe  that  if  those  tenants  on 
that  wild  mountain  waste  were  given  leases  of  which  no  landlord 
could  deprive  them,  the  improvements  of  Partry  would  be  realized 
much  quicker  than  any  company  could  ever  acomplish.  Nothing 
will  ever  induce  me  to  conceal  or  modify  the  strong  convictions 
I  entertain  on  that  subject.  However,  such  is  not  the  law ;  but  I 
believe  this  country  will  never  be  at  peace  until  something  of  the 
kind  is  done.  The  company  got  those  tenants  into  their  power, 
and  the  question  is  have  they  used  that  power  unfairly  ?  When 
November  comes  they  compel  them,  still  keeping  them  in  their 
power,  to  sign  an  agreement  that  they  hold  as  caretakers,  and 
immediately  after  that  an  agreement  is  signed  by  which  they 
become  tenants  from  year  to  year,  under  conditions  of  which 
no  man  can  express  his  disapprobation  stronger  than  I  do. 
But  these  agreements  are,  unhappily,  becoming  every  day  more 
common  in  the  country ;  and  with  the  commercial  spirit  that  is 
getting  abroad,  and  the  breaking  down  of  old  feelings,  the  notion 
is  abroad  that  the  more  you  can  make  a  tenant  the  absolute 
slave  of  his  landlord,  the  better  your  chance  of  improving  the 
country.  I  do  not  think  so.  I  believe  it  would  be  from  the 
labor  of  freemen,  left  to  regulate  their  own  affairs,  that  the 
improvement  of  the  country  would  best  proceed ;  and  I  would 
rather  give  freedom  and  intelligence  to  half  a  million  of  tenants 
than  leave  the  country  to  the  improvement  of  companies,  or 
4,000  or  5,000  landlords.  But  the  plaintiff,  he  submitted,  was 
not  responsible  for  all  this.  He  admittedly  took  portion  of  the 
land,  for  which  he  paid  £30  a-year  rent,  and  drove  his  cattle  upon 
it;  for  that  was  he  to.be  designated  a  robber  ?  Were  not  some 
improvements  to  be  made  ?  In  the  name  of  common  sense,  was  a 
great  mountain  of  1,500  acres  to  be  waste,  to  be  trespassed  on 
from  neighboring  estates  ?  Was  it  to  be  said  that  because  a  tenant 
in  Killarney,  for  instance,  bad  a  right  to  send  up  sheep  to  graze 
on  Mangerton,  that  was  to  preclude  all  possibility  of  improvement  ? 
Notices  to  quit  were  admittedly  served,  but  there  was  no  evidence 
that,  up  to  the  present,  any  of  them  had  been  actually  executed. 
The  whole  case,  he  contended,  had  shown  that  Mr.  Lavelle’s 
letters  contained  imputations  on  the  company  which  were  utterly 


478 


APPENDIX. 


groundless.  It  was  plain  there  was  something  of  angry  feeling 
between  Mr.  Lavelle  and  the  agent  of  the  company,  something  of 
the  strife  of  ascendency  between  them,  which  made  Mr.  Lavelle 
sensitive  of  any  act  which  would  enable  him  to  expose  Proudfoot. 
He  alleged  there  was  not  such  oppression  practised  on  any  other 
property  in  Ireland,  model  Scully’s,  perhaps,  excepted,  and  for 
that  the  action  was  brought.  There  was  a  plea  of  fair  comment, 
but  that  did  not  justify  untruth.  Were  those  letters  a  fair  com¬ 
ment  on  •what  really  had  occurred?  The  learned  counsel  pro¬ 
ceeded  at  some  length  to  argue  that  the  comments  were  not 
justified.  Those  charges  had  rung  through  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  land,  and  through  England,  with  the  sanction  of  Mr. 
Lavelle’s  name.  He  did  not  think  Father  Lavelle  spoke  worthily 
of  himself  or  his  boldness  of  character  when  he  stated  it  was  a 
fact.  It  was  not  fair  comment  to  say  that  a  whole  mountain  out¬ 
let,  on  which  the  tenants  depended,  had  been  taken  away.  If 
the  facts  had  been  accurately  stated  in  the  letter,  and  then  the 
strongest  language  used,  he  (Mr.  Butt)  would  not  complain.  He 
would  ask  that  every  man  in  the  community — he  cared  not 
whether  he  was  the  editor  of  a  .newspaper,  or  a  priest,  or  a 
parson — that  when  he  dealt  with  public  matters  he  should  place 
the  facts  fairly  and  fully  before  the  public,  and  not  shelter  him¬ 
self  by  merely  stating  it  was  a  fair  comment.  That  was  the  issue 
which  the  jury  had  to  try.  Was  that  statement,  which  had  been 
deliberately  sent  forth  to  the  world,  a  fair  comment  ?  The  right 
to  graze  the  sheep  on  the  mountain  was  a  mere  permissive  one, 
and  he  was  justified  in  saying  so,  for,  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  the  case,  there  was  not  a  scrap  of  paper  produced  to  show 
that  anyone  of  these  tenants  ever  had  an  actual  right  to  that 
mountain.  It  was  merely  given  to  them  as  an  indulgence  by  the 
landlord.  The  company,  he  contended,  really  never  had  any 
intention  of  disturbing  them.  Would  the  jury,  he  asked,  be 
justified  in  saying  they  had  been  unfairly  treated  ?  He  believed 
the  honor  and  dignity  of  a  -country  depended  above  all  other  con¬ 
siderations  on  the  public  tribunals  doing  impartial  justice,  unin¬ 
fluenced  by  prejudice,  by  political  feeling,  or  popular  clamor,  or 
even  the  desire  of  popular  applause,  or  even  the  more  pious  desire 
of  gaining  the  prayers  of  the  poor  in  Partry.  He  asked  them  to 
think  of  nothing  except  the  desire  of  doing  justice  between  man 
and  man.  There  was  a  wise  saying  in  the  book  of  Proverbs — 
“Lean  not  to  the  cause  of  the  rich  man  because  he  is  rich” — but 
Solomon,  who  knew  the  world,  added — “nor  favor  the  cause  of 
the  poor  man  because  he  is  poor.”  They  should  hold  the  scales  of 
justice  fairly.  He  would  be  sorry  to  think  the  Itev.  Mr.  Lavelle 
wrote  part  of  the  libel  intending  to  mislead,  but  he  feared  he 
penned  a  great  many  of  his  sentences  with  haste  and  without  due 
reflection.  He  believed  it  was  the  highest  Christian  duty  to 
judge  not,  lest  you  might  be  judged.  It  was  the  solemn  duty  of 
every  man,  before  he  held  up  another  to  public  scorn  or  execra¬ 
tion,  to  make  an  anxious  and  discriminating  inquiry,  to  ascertain 


APPENDIX, 


479 


tlie  truth  of  what  he  was  about  to  write.  Was  such  an  inquiry 
made  ?  That  was  really  the  question  they  had  to  try.  All  the 
magnificent  declamation  to  which  he  had  listened  with  admiration 
could  not  alter  or  turn  their  minds  from  the  real  issue  in  the  case. 
Were  those  letters  a  fair  comment?  Why  was  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
singled  out  from  all  others,  having  no  more  to  do  with  that  distress 
than  any  of  the  jury  had  ?  It  was  the  sudden  exercise — whether 
right  or  wrong — of  this  manager  seizing  the  cattle  of  the  man 
who,  he  was  told,  was  going  to  America  without  paying  his  rent : 
no  application  was  made  to  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  in  reference  to  it.  If 
there  had.  he  was  sure  it  would  have  been  listened  to.  The  next 
passage  of  the  libel  contained  an  expression  of  Mr.  Lavelle’s 
belief  that  cattle,  the  property  of  the  chairman,  were  feeding  on 
grass  for  which  the  tenants  were  paying  rent.  Was  that  a  fair 
comment  on  anything  that  Mr.  M'Cullagh  did?  That  was  the 
imputation  which  made  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  bring  the  action,  and  it 
was  made  upon  the  foundation  of  one  single  sheep  having  been 
found  grazing,  having  on  it  the  lettei's  “AMC.”  As  to  the 
chai’ges  in  reference  to  the  Widow  Gibbons,  he  denied  their 
accuracy.  Her  case  was  tlie  only  one  they  could  fix  on,  and 
which  of  them,  as  employers,  could  have  every  act  of  theirs 
dragged  before  the  public,  and  then  be  branded  as  a  tyrant  and 
child  of  death  ?  That  seizure  was  a  pure  mistake.  The  manager 
heard  she  was  going  to  America  without  paying  her  rent,  and 
adopted  measiu’es  to  get  it  from  her.  The  imputation  in  reference 
to  the  tenant  not  being  allowed  to  compete  for  the  land  was 
wholly  untrue,  for  Mr.  M£Cullagh  never  had  Port  Royal.  Had  any¬ 
thing  transpired  to  justify  the  chai’ge  of  £400  being  spent  on  the 
house  and  office?  Was  there  ever  such  a  passion  for  slander,  that 
it  could  build  up  this  stox-y  to  degrade  JNlr.  M‘Cullagh  in  the  esti¬ 
mation  of  every  man,  on  no  better  foundation  than  that  he  saw  a 
sheep  there  with  a  brand  on  it  ?  This  was  not  the  conduct  by  which 
any  Christian  clergyman  ought  to  illustrate  the  pi’inciples  and 
precepts  of  their  common  religion.  “  Bear  not  false  witness  against 
thy  neighbor”  was  the  command  of  God,  and  long  before  that 
command  it  was  written  on  the  conscience  of  every  right-minded 
human  being.  Was  that  false  witness  ?  The  man  who  rushed  to 
such  statements  as  that  without  a  moral  conviction  of  their  truth 
was  just  as  guilty  as  the  man  who  invented  them.  Was  that  a 
fair  comment  proved  by  any  fact  on  the  trial?  Mr.  M‘Cullagh 
paid  x'ent  for  the  pasturage  at  Derassa ;  and  he  regretted  Father 
Lavelle  destroyed  so  many  great  qualities  by  rushing  so  hastily  into 
a  matter  on  which  he  was  so  ill  informed.  The  learned  counsel 
went  on  to  say  that  the  reference  to  the  story  of  the  Prophet 
Nathan  was  merely  another  proof  of  the  rashness,  and  he  must  say 
the  recklessness,  of  a  man  who  did  not  pause  to  measure  or  weigh 
the  effect  of  his  words.  He  argued  that  it  was  vain  to  attempt  to 
shield  Major  Knox  from  the  personal  responsibility  of  having 
published  Father  Lavelle’s  letters  in  the  Irish  Times,  a  most 
influential  and  powerful  paper.  Father  Lavelle  had  not  the 


so 


Am  NDIX. 


power — and  probably  it  was  as  well  for  himself  he  had  not  the 
power — of  publishing  some  of  his  reckless  statements  to  the  world. 
He  thought  that  the  proper  course  for  Major  Knox  to  have 
adopted  in  this  case  would  have  been  to  have  settled  this  action, 
as  he  could  have  done  by  lodging  a  small  sum  in  court,  and  pub¬ 
lishing  an  apology  in  his  newspaper  for  the  attack  on  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh’s  private  character.  Major  Knox  had  not  chosen  to  do 
that,  but  he  had  adopted  the  statements  of  Father  Lavelle,  and 
attempted  to  sustain  his  case  by  the  plea  of  fair  comment.  They 
were  bound  to  do  justice  to  Mr.  M'Cullagh  ;  truth  and  justice  and 
honor  demanded  that  they  should  give  their  verdict  for  Mr. 
M'Cullagh,  who  did  not  bring  the  action  with  the  object  of  gain¬ 
ing  money.  They  were  bound  to  give  substantial  damages.  He 
did  not  care  what  prejudice  they  had  against  a  land- jobbing  com¬ 
pany,  the  character  and  honor  of  one  their  brethren  was  at  stake 
— he  did  not  mean  a  brother  merchant,  but  a  brother  man ;  and 
they  should  do  unto  him  as  they  would  wish  that  others  should  do 
unto  them  if  ever  they  came  to  a  court  of  justice  ixpon  grounds 
like  these,  being  sullied  in  mercantile  honor  and  private  character, 
and  they  should  give  him  such  a  verdict  as  they  would  desire  a 
jury  of  their  countrymen  should  give  them  if  in  a  similar  position. 
(Slight  applause.) 

The  Lord  Chief  Justice  said  it  became  his  duty  to  sum  up  the 
evidence  in  the  case  to  which  the  jury  had  listened  with  such  close 
attention  for  some  days.  The  case  involved  considerations  of  im¬ 
portance  both  to  the  parties  concerned,  and,  he  might  also  say,  to 
the  public  generally.  Topics  had  been  introduced  into  the  case 
during  the  course  of  the  trial  which,  though  not,  perhaps,  entirely 
relevant  to  the  issues,  yet  were  not  unnatural ;  but  they  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question  of  the  general  management  of 
estates  in  Ireland  ;  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  duties  of  land¬ 
lords  and  the  duties  of  tenants,  generally  speaking— with  fixity  of 
tenure,  or  any  other  of  the  topics  which  had  been  introduced  to 
them  by  the  learned  counsel  who  had  addressed  them,  either  in 
illustration,  or,  perhaps,  in  the  somewhat  unnecessary  expression 
of  their  own  individual  opinions.  They  had  enough  to  do  in  dis¬ 
posing  of  the  issue  that  was  before  them.  The  parties  to  it  were 
Mr.  Andrew  M'Cullagh,  who  was  the  plaintiff,  and  as  it  was  ad¬ 
mitted  on  all  hands,  a  merchant  of  respectability  and  character  in 
the  city.  His  complaint  was  that  he  was  defamed  by  the  defen¬ 
dant  in  his  private  character  and  in  his  official  character,  beyond 
the  limits  which  the  law  gave  in  the  assertion  of  the  right  claimed 
by  the  defendant.  The  defendant,  Major  Laurence  E.  Knox,  was 
the  proprietor  of  the  Irish  Times — a  journal  which  was  largely  cir¬ 
culated  in  this  kingdom,  and  he  said  on  his  own  behalf,  that  he 
had  published  the  articles  complained  of,  but  that  under  the  circum- 
stances,  which  he  (the  Chief  Justice)  would  call  attention  to,  as 
a  public  journalist,  in  the  assertion  of  the  undoubted  and  unques¬ 
tionable  liberty  of  the  press,  he  said  he  had  a  right  to  publish 
them.  He  said  he  had  no  malice  towards  the  plaintiff — though 


ArPENDIX. 


481 


that  would  not  be  important  if  he  was  not  otherwise  protected,  be¬ 
cause  malice  was  only  a  consideration  where  the  paper  published 
was  privileged  ;  for  if  a  man  were  to  insert  an  article  attacking 
any  of  them,  and  that  it  was  in  itself  defamatory,  it  would  not, 
in  the  law,  at  least,  be  any  answer  to  say  that  he  was  not 
maliciously  disposed,  because  the  law  then  would  infer  malice  from 
the  nature  of  the  act  done.  But  when  the  publication  was  an  as¬ 
sertion  of  a  right,  on  legal  grounds,  then  it  was  of  importance  to  see 
whether  the  publisher  had  any  express  feeling  towards  the  plain¬ 
tiff.  In  this  case,  they  had  a  witness  who  admitted  before  them 
that  he  was  the  author  of  these  writings — the  Bev.  Patrick  Lavelle 
— who  appeared  to  be  a  man  of  considerable  ability,  and  much 
energy  of  character.  He  described  himself  as  being  very 
peculiarly  placed,  which  might  account  for  what  appeared  to 
an  unbiassed  listener  as  claiming  somewhat  of  an  assertion  of 
authority  and  dictation  ;  but  it  was  for  them  to  judge  of  the  value 
of  his  reasons,  which,  as  matters  of  fact,  they  could  easily  under¬ 
stand.  He  said  that  he  resided  in  a  very  remote  part  of  Ireland, 
where,  strange  as  it  might  appear  to  them — and  now  appeared  to 
be  a  matter  of  fact — that  the  great  body  of  the  people \Could  not 
speak  the  English  tongue.  He  informed  them  that  the  doctor, 
whom  he  (the  Chief  Justice)  supposed  he  saw  as  less  frequently  as 
possible,  could  speak  English  ;  that  the  parson,  whom  he  also  sup¬ 
posed  he  rarely  saw  at  all— (a  laugh) — also  spoke  English  ;  but 
that,  with  the  exception  of  these  two  official  persons,  in  a  parish 
consisting  of  about  three  thousand  persons,  only  two  or  three 
really  understood  the  English  tongue.  That  was  a  very  remark¬ 
able  statement.  These  people,  therefore,  according  to  his  view  of  the 
matter,  not  unnaturally  listened  to  him  because  they  could  under¬ 
stand  him  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had  it  all  his  own  way,  be¬ 
cause  when  he  addressed  them  there  was  no  one  to  contradict 
him.  If  he  had  been  otherwise  placed— if  he  had  been  in  a  diffe¬ 
rent  situation— and  these  were  matters  not  to  be  thrown  out  of 
consideration  by  the  jury — he  need  hardly  tell  them  that  as  a 
clergyman  he  had  no  more  privilege  than  any  other  subject  in 
point  of  law.  The  defendant  appeared  before  them,  and  manfully 
avowed  that  he  was  responsible  for  all  that  was  published  by  him 
— that  he  was  the  real  defendant  in  the  action.  No  matter  how 
many  his  correspondents,  or  respectable  they  might  be,  if  any 
third  person  in  the  city  was  injuriously  affected  by  what  was  pub¬ 
lished,  he  need  scarcely  say  the  proprietor  or  publisher  of  a  news¬ 
paper  was  legally  accountable.  A  large  number  of  witnesses  ap¬ 
peared  before  them,  some  of  them  parishioners  of  Partry,  from  this 
remote  part  of  the  country.  They  had  heard  them,  and  it  would 
be  for  the  jury  to  consider  whether  it  had  appeared  that  there  was 
anything  in  their  manner  of  giving  evidence  that  would  induce 
them  to  disbelieve  the  testimony  they  gave.  Such  of  them  as 
spoke  English,  appeared  to  him  to  be  rather  underrated  as  to  their 
intelligence.  They  seemed  to  possess  as  much  ability,  and 
knowledge,  and  capability  of  expressing  themselves  and  giving 

2  )r 


482 


APPENDIX. 


their  evidence  as  any  other  man  in  the  same  class  in  any  other 
part  of  the  country.  Those  who  spoke  only  Irish  appeared 
before  them  also,  and  they  gave  their  evidence  through  an  in¬ 
terpreter,  and  one  of  the  jurors  had  the  great  advantage  of 
being  able  occasionally  to  correct  the  translation  of  their  evi¬ 
dence  ;  but  it  would  be  for  them  to  say,  having  regard  to  their 
testimony,  had  anything  occurred  in  the  manner  in  which  they 
gave  their  evidence  to  disentitle  them  to  belief.  This  speaking 
of  Irish  exclusively  appeared  to  them  as  singular,  but  if  they  re¬ 
flected  for  a  moment  it  was  not  so.  When  they  crossed  over  to 
Holyhead,  they  found  numbers  of  men  talking  the  Welsh  tongue, 
and  resolutely  refusing  to  talk  any  other,  and  adhering  to  their 
peculiarities  and  characteristics  with  that  tenacity  which  marked 
the  Celtic  race,  living  as  they  did  in  peace  and  happiness  under 
the  English  rule.  Those  people  who  had  appeared  before  them 
lived  under  the  same  beneficent  rale  in  another  part  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  maintaining  their  peculiarities  and  characteristics, 
as  they  had  a  right  to  do.  The  only  reflection  that  'presented 
itself  was,  that  possibly  sufficient  respect  had  not  been  at  all 
times  paid  to  the  value  of  understanding  that  language — a  means 
of  access  to  their  understandings  and  hearts.  Mr.  Butt  had 
warned  them  against  feeling  any  peculiar  sympathy  for  them,  and 
so  should  he  (the  Chief  Justice).  They  were  subjects  of  the 
queen,  entitled  to  the  same  consideration  as  any  other  man  in 
the  community — no  matter  how  high  and  wealthy.  They  were 
entitled  to  no  more,  and  were  entitled  to  no  less.  The  learned 
counsel  who  had  last  addressed  them,  also  pressed  on  them,  with 
all  the  ability  of  which  he  was  master,  this  consideration — that 
this  action  was  brought  to  vindicate  the  private  character  of  the 
plaintiff.  He  had  told  them  that  his  personal  honor  and  com¬ 
mercial  reputation  were  affected  by  those  libels,  and  therefore  it 
became  of  peculiar  importance  to  see  how  he  had  introduced  his 
complaint  to  their  notice.  He  would  therefore  call  their  attention 
to  the  summons  and  plaiut,  because  it  brought  to  their  minds  the 
statements  that  were  complained  of.  Having  then  referred  to 
the  counts  in  the  plaint,  his  lordship  said  that  he  did  not  see  that 
Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  alleged  in  any  way  that  his  mercantile 
character  or  reputation  were  injured.  It  would  be  their  duty — 
and  no  men  were  more  sensitive  on  matters  of  that  kind  than  a 
jury  of  merchants,  as  they  ought  to  be — if  they  found  that  the 
private  character  or  reputation  of  a  mercantile  gentleman  of  un¬ 
doubted  honor  and  credit  in  the  city,  should  be  rashly  impugned 
by  any  other  person,  no  matter  how  respectable — the  more  re¬ 
spectable  his  journal,  the  more  marked  ought  to  be  the  resentment 
against  such  an  unauthorized  publication — to  award  such  damages 
as  they  thought  equitable.  That  being  the  nature  of  the  com¬ 
plaint,  he  would  remind  them  of  the  real  defences  that  they  were 
to  try,  and  one  peculiar  plea  to  which  he  would  call  attention 
was  most  important.  The  defendant  said  that  the  management 
of  the  Port  Poyal  estate  by  the  National  Building  and  Land 


APPENDIX. 


483 


Investment  Company  liad  become,  and  was  at  the  time  of  publi¬ 
cation,  a  matter  of  great  public  interest  and  notoriety.  That 
was  one  of  the  questions  for  the  jury.  The  defendant  also  said 
that  the  words  complained  of  were  a  fair  and  bona  fide  comment 
on  the  conduct  of  the  said  company  and  of  the  plaintiff  as  chair¬ 
man,  in  reference  to  the  management  of  the  said  Port  Eoyal 
estate  by  the  said  company,  and  by  the  plaintiff  as  chairman 
thereof.  That  was  the  manner  in  which  the  defendant  excused 
himself — that  the  words  were  printed  and  published  as  and  for 
such  comment,  bona  fide,  and  without  any  malicious  intent  or 
motive  whatever.  The  issue  for  the  jury  then  was  upon  the  truth 
of  that  plea,  and  whether  it  was  well  founded  in  fact.  The 
moment  he  presented  that  plea,  a  matter  of  really  very  great 
interest  arose  for  their  consideration.  They  would  perceive  that 
what  the  defendant  alleged  was,  that  he  had  commented  upon 
the  conduct  of  the  plaintiff  as  chairman  of  the  company  ;  but, 
keeping  for  a  moment  to  generalities,  the  conduct  criticized  was  not 
unlawful  conduct.  It  was  conduct  that  might  be  pursued  by  a 
body  of  men  such  as  the  plaintiff  represented— in  pursuit,  as  they 
said,  of  what  they  called  legal  objects.  The  system  of  law  or  the 
system  of  government  was  said,  by  certain  writers,  to  be  a  beauti¬ 
ful  system  of  checks  and  counterchecks.  Every  man  might  go  to 
law.  The  offices  of  that  court  were  open,  as  they  were  aware, 
for  any  man  who  wished  to  commence  a  lawsuit.  It  was  his 
right  to  go  to  law.  It  was  not  unlawful  to  assert  his  legal  right, 
and  though  that  was  a  perfectly  legal  thing  to  do,  yet  if,  in  the 
doing  of  that  legal  thing,  he  prosecuted  a  man,  and  that  man  might 
happen  to  be  acquitted,  if  he  had  been  prosecxrted  without  reason¬ 
able  cause,  or  maliciously,  the  fact  of  its  being  done  under  the 
forms  of  law  would  not  excuse  the  prosecutor,  and  the  very  same 
law  that  permitted  him  to  enforce  its  sanctions,  would  again 
permit  a  remedy  against  him  if  he  had  used  the  forms  of  law 
without  probable  cause  and  maliciously.  The  law  of  opinion 
existed  here.  The  law  of  opinion  was  part  of  their  law,  and 
although  there  might  be  no  legal  redress  for  any  tenant  on  the 
Partry  estate,  yet,  if  subject  to  the  limitation,  he  would  explain 
that  the  defendant  had  a  right  to  publish  or  comment  upon  the 
conduct  of  a  public  body  on  matters  that  fairly  concerned  the 
public  :  then  he  was  an  assertor  of  the  law  of  opinion,  which 
was,  in  many  instances,  the  only  law  that  could  afford  redress  to 
persons  who  might  otherwise  be  without  redress.  No  man  could 
escape  from  the  law  of  opinion  ;  so  that  a  body  of  men  might  pursue 
their  legal  rights  in  such  a  way,  as  they  were  pursuing  them  in  a 
public  concern,  as  to  provoke  comment  and  discussion,  and  they 
might  meet  those  comments,  which,  if  they  were  levelled  at  them  in 
their  individual  capacity,  would  be  defamatory  and  punishable  ; 
yet  they  were  excused  in  the  assertion  of  that  law  of  opinion. 
They  had  heard  a  good  deal  said  about  that  law  of  opinion,  or  the 
right  to  comment  upon  the  conduct  of  public  men  ;  and  it  was 
better  that  he  should  dispose  of  anything  he  had  to  say  on  that 


484 


APPENDIX. 


subject  first.  Fair  comment  on  all  public  proceedings  in  which 
the  people  had  an  interest  was  privilegeable.  So  also  was  fair 
comment  on  the  conduct  of  public  men,  fair  and  bona  fide  reviews 
and  criticisms  of  books  and  literary  productions  of  all  kinds,  also 
of  artists,  paintings,  and  works  of  sculpture,  and  the  editor  of  a 
newspaper  might  fairly  comment  on  the  performance  at  any  place 
of  public  entertainment,  but  if  such  comment  be  unjust  and  male¬ 
volent,  or  exceeded  the  limits  of  fair  criticism,  or  contained  an 
attack  on  private  character,  or  imputations  of  bad  or  sordid 
motives,  they  would  be  punishable.  This  admirable  system  put 
a  check  on  the  assertion  of  that  right  or  law  of  opinion,  but  still 
there  was  a  check  upon  it.  They  had  a  right,  no  doubt,  as  they 
would  say,  to  express  their  opinion  on  certain  subjects,  but  the 
limitations  were  that  the  subject  itself  should  warrant  its  publica¬ 
tion,  and  that  in  the  assertion  of  their  right  of  comment  and  opin¬ 
ion  they  had  not  transgressed  the  bounds  set  by  law  to  the  asser¬ 
tion  of  that  opinion.  If  they  asked  him  what  were  those  limita¬ 
tions,  he  must  only  look  to  them  for  the  definition.  There  wras  no 
precise  limit  drawn  by  the  law,  and  the  matter  was  to  be  decided 
by  the  conscientious  judgment  of  a  jury.  On  a  similar  principle 
imputations  upon  the  conduct  of  public  men  w’ere  privileged,  if 
the  jury  found  they  were  made  honestly  and  with  some  reasonable 
ground.  He  must  tell  them  why  he  had  received  all  the  evidence 
they  had  heard — not  because  justification  was  pleaded,  for  the 
defendant  had  not  pleaded  that  all  that  wTas  written  was  true. 
The  reason  he  had  received  it  was  because  it  was  all  pointed  to 
the  fact  that  they  were  at  liberty  to  consider,  and  must  consider — 
was  there  reasonable  ground  for  the  publications  upon  the  entire 
of  which  they  were  to  pronounce  a  judgment?  Then  the  author¬ 
ity  said  :  4  ‘  But  it  is  not  enough  that  the  party  making  those  state¬ 
ments  honestly  believed  the  imputations  to  be  true.  There  must 
be  some  reasonable  ground  for  the  belief,  otherwise  zeal  and  fana¬ 
ticism  might  induce  a  man  without  reasonable  ground  to  impute 
the  worst  motives  to  another.”  One  instance  he  would  mention 
wras  this.  The  management  of  a  certain  hospital  was  the  subject 
matter  of  discussion,  and  a  report  was  published  by  those  who 
inquired  into  it,  and  a  physician  who  felt  aggrieved  complained  of 
the  first  sentence  of  the  report,  which  stated  that  his  conduct  was 
arbitrary  and  tyrannical,  and  spoke  of  his  complete  inefficiency  for 
every  office  in  the  college.  The  whole  of  the  report  w’ith  those  pre¬ 
fatory  observations  were  published  in  a  journal,  and  published  at 
a  considerable  length  of  time  after  it  occurred.  The  chief  justice 
stated  to  the  jury  who  tried  the  case,  that  the  question  whether  it 
was  privileged  would  depend  on  the  consideration  of  one  or  two 
points,  the  first  of  which  was  whether  the  report  was  a  matter  that 
it  interested  the  public  to  know.  A  man  had  a  right  to  publish  for 
the  purpose  of  giving  the  public  information  on  that  which  it  was 
proper  for  the  public  to  know.  Then  the  chief  justice  put  it  to  the 
jury  in  these  wrords :  “Secondly,”  he  says,  “if  you  are  of  the 
opinion  that  this  was  a  matter  which  it  concerned  the  public  to 


APPENDIX. 


485 


know,  did  the  defendant  publish  it  with  the  view  to  afford  infor¬ 
mation  upon  matter  in  which  the  public  were  interested,  arid  did 
he  do  so  in  the  honest  desire  to  afford  information,  or  with  a  sinister 
motive.  ”  He  said  that  it  was  the  duty  of  a  public  journalist  to  bring 
before  the  public  information  which  it  was  right  for  them  to  know, 
and  to  publish  the  report  from  beginning  to  end.  Although  the 
passage  was  so  defamatory,  yet,  being  connected  with  the  rest  of 
it,  it  did  turn  out  that  in  that  instance  the  jury  acquitted  the  de¬ 
fendant  for  the  publication,  solely  on  the  ground  that  it  was  for 
the  public  benefit  to  publish  these  matters,  and  that  the  publica¬ 
tion  related  to  a  public  matter.  In  another  case,  in  which  a 
medical  man  was  offended  at  the  publication  of  a  certaiu  book,  the 
judgment  was,  that  a  public  writer,  in  commenting  on  matters  of 
public  interest,  was  protected  and  excused,  if  the  writing  was  with 
honest  and  reasonable  moderation,  and  with  self-control,  and  that 
he  made  no  mistaken  inferences  or  defamatory  statements  he  could 
not  sustain.  Drawing  mistaken  inferences  would  not  still  deprive 
him  of  the  privilege,  if  the  occasion  was  public,  the  subject  matter 
public,  and  that  the  complaint  was  not  for  the  purpose  of  carrying 
out  some  malicious  and  sinister  object.  The  first  thing  he  had  to 
draw  their  attention  to,  was  the  facts  which  had  been  proved  to 
have  existed  prior  to  the  publication  of  the  earliest  of  these  let¬ 
ters.  The  first  letter  was  one  of  importance,  because  in  looking 
into  the  conduct  of  the  plaintiff,  as  they  were  bound  to  do  closely 
in  all  these  transactions,  they  should  ascertain  the  state  of  affairs 
which  existed  at  the  date  of  the  publication  of  each  of  these  letters 
— thefirst  in  particular — and  whetherthere  were  reasonable  grounds 
for  the  strong  comments  on  the  plaintiff’s  conduct  published  by  the 
defendant.  The  first  thing  they  were  to  consider  was,  whether  the 
subject  was  a  matter  for  comment  at  all.  The  prospectus  of  the 
company  had  been  given  in  evidence,  and  in  it  the  company  asked 
the  public  to  subscribe  a  million  of  money  to  the  undertaking  spe¬ 
cified,  and  which  was  stated  to  be  of  great  advantage  to  the  pub¬ 
lic.  It  would  be  for  the  jury  to  say  whether,  considering  the  object 
therein  stated,  that  it  was  a  matter  of  public  interest,  aud  in  which 
they  had  a  legitimate  concern.  Looking  into  the  objects  men¬ 
tioned,  he  should  say  they  were  very  laudable,  and  he  might  say 
that  any  plan  for  improving  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  in  this  city 
would  be  a  most  excellent  object.  Now,  that  document  came 
from  the  plaintiff.  It  was  a  report,  dated  ’66  ;  and  after  stating 
how  the  company  employed  their  capital,  and  the  importance  of 
extending  their  operations,  it  referred  to  the  Partry  estate.  It 
said:  “  The  importance  of  extending  the  company’s  operations  for 
the  purchase  and  distribution  of  land  in  Ireland,  has  received  early 
and  anxious  consideration  on  the  part  of  the  directors,  and  they 
are  happy  to  acquaint  the  shareholders  that  they  have  recently 
effected  the  purchase  of  a  valuable  property  in  the  county  of  Mayo, 
consisting  of  upwards  of  five  thousand  acres,  which  the  directors 
expect  will  prove  a  profitable  speculation,  and  afford  favorable  op¬ 
portunities  for  carrying  into  effect  their  wishes  in  giving  deserving 


486 


APPENDIX. 


and  improving  tenants  fixity  of  tenure.”  He  read  that  to  them 
as  he  was  bound  to  do ;  but  he  was  not  bound  to  explain  what 
fixity  of  tenure  was.  Some  public  orators  used  the  words  without 
any  particular  meaning,  but  lie  gave  it  to  them  as  it  was — “by 
granting  leases  where  practicable  to  do  so  ;  and  to  carry  out  those 
improvements  which,  whilst  they  are  intended  for  the  present  or 
future  advantages  of  the  tenants,  will  materially  improve  the  value 
of  the  land  ;  and  they  have  the  pleasure  of  stating  that  the  com¬ 
pany’s  surveyor  has  just  submitted  a  favorable  report  on  the 
value  and  condition  of  the  property,  which  will  be  read  to  you.  ” 
His  lordship  then  read  Mr.  Brett’s  report.  The  whole  concluded 
with  an  appeal  to  the  public  and  the  shareholders  for  an  increased 
support.  He  had  read  Mr.  Brett’s  account  with  great  interest,  for  it 
did  not  give  in  it  an  account  of  the  miserable  condition  of  the  tenants 
such  as  existed  in  other  parts  of  Ireland.  He  stated  that  he  found 
the  crops  to  be  generally  of  an  excellent  quality,  the  tenants  indus¬ 
triously  engaged,  the  cattle  and  sheep  in  good  condition,  and  the 
country  altogether  presenting  a  striking  aspect  of  prosperity,  strongly 
contrasting  with  the  poverty  he  had  witnessed  in  former  years.  It 
occurred  to  him  one  evening  that  he  should  the  following  morning 
liave  asked  the  very  interesting  question  of  how  the  rents  were  paid, 
and  he  believed  what  philanthropists  and  buyers  all  looked  to  was 
how  the  rents  were  paid.  The  answer  he  received  was  that  the 
rents  were  paid  punctually — in  fact,  there  were  no  arrears,  and 
therefore,  as  far  as  the  tenants  were  concerned,  it  appeared  that 
they  had  committed  no  crime.  They  had  not  been  guilty  of 
attacking  the  agent,  surveyors,  or  landlords.  They  had  main¬ 
tained  their  engagement  as  they  were  bound  to  do,  and  in  life  a 
man  who  kept  his  engagements  was  respected.  His  lordship  con¬ 
tinued  to  read  from  Mr.  Brett’s  report.  Considering  that  the 
rents  were  well  paid  and  the  money  given  by  the  company  for  the 
estate,  he  thought  the  fact  that  the  proposed  rental  cf  £1,100,  as 
times  went,  would  be  a  very  handsome  return  for  their  money. 
A  passage  in  that  report  would  lead  them  to  this  quarrel,  into 
which  Mr.  Lavelle  had  plunged  with  his  usual  ardor — namely,  in 
which  he  referred  to  500  acres  of  pasture  laud  which  might  be  let 
to  tenants  who  had  purchased  stock,  or  to  outsiders.  His  lordship 
said  that  the  report  was  very  creditable  to  Mr.  Brett.  In  his 
secoud  report  he  corroborated  Mr.  Lavelle  with  reference  to  the 
destitution  in  the  spring  of  1867,  and  said  he  found  the  tenantry 
well  ordered  and  industrious.  They  had  a  full  statement  of  what 
the  company  intended  to  do  before  the  new  rent  was  put  on.  The 
company  held  under  an  old  church  lease,  which  the  bishops  made 
in  former  times,  if  he  might  speak  of  a  moribund  corporation  with 
respect.  It  was  a  rare  thing  for  a  bishop  to  run  his  life  against  a 
lease,  and  therefore  they  were  renewed.  The  Ecclesiastical  Com¬ 
missioners,  also  a  moribund  body,  had  power  to  turn  it  into  per¬ 
petuity,  and  recently  had  converted  no  less  than  twenty-four 
tenancies  into  perpetuity.  He  then  came  to  a  curious  and  critical 
part  of  the  case,  which  puzzled  him  very  much  for  some  time 


APPENDIX. 


487 


There  was  no  instance  in  which  it  appeared  a  single  tenant  on  this 
estate  held  a  lease.  They  were  all  tenants  from  year  to  year. 
They  had  sworn  that  their  fathers,  and  grandfathers,  for  genera¬ 
tions,  had  lived  there.  Therefore  they  should  believe  that  the 
observations  made  that  tenancies  from  year  to  year  afforded  no 
security  for  the  peaceable  enjoyment  of  a  man’s  property  were 
very  exaggerated,  for  in  Ireland  they  would  find  thousands  of 
families  living  in  peace  and  comfort  under  tenancies  from  year  to 
year,  especially  in  Ulster,  where  they  had  trust  and  confidence  in 
the  honor  of  their  landlords,  and  where  tenants  often  refused  to 
go  to  the  expense  of  taking  out  leases  when  offered  them.  He 
(the  chief  justice)  could  not  suppress  a  smile  when  Mr.  Heron 
said  what  would  be  done  on  some  estates  in  the  north  of  Ireland 
if  an  agent  were  to  go  amongst  the  tenants  and  ask  them  to  sign 
an  agreement  which  they  did  not  understand.  He  doubted 
whether  anyone  would  have  the  presumption  to  do  so.  Perhaps 
the  tenants  would  not  be  so  accommodating  as  the  innocent  people 
in  Partry.  Tenants  had  legal  rights,  and  could  not  be  evicted 
without  notices,  and  the  law  was  very  strict  in  respect  of  such 
notices.  The  tenants  on  the  Partry  estate  were  all  tenants  from 
year  to  ‘year,  having  the  legal  right  of  such  tenants.  A  very 
powerful  argument  had  been  addressed  to  them  by  the  learned 
counsel  who  last  spoke.  He  said,  and  with  some  degree  of  truth, 
that  the  company,  whatever  might  be  their  intention,  had  not 
done  anything  to  disturb  any  of  the  tenants.  That  might  be  true. 
But  the  jury  were  to  consider  what  was  the  condition  of  this 
estate  under  the  management  of  the  company  at  the  time  of  the 
publication  of  the  alleged  defamatory  letters.  His  lordship 
referred  to  the  agreements  the  tenants  were  induced  to  sign  to 
give  up  their  lands,  and  explained  to  the  jury  the  effect  of  these. 
The  law  did  not  hold  a  tenant  as  sm’rendering  his  land  unless  the 
surrender  was  in  writing.  The  law  was  wise  in  its  provisions, 
and  to  prevent  the  frauds  and  perjuries  which  might  arise  by  a 
man  merely  saying  he  surrendered  his  tenancy,  the  law  recpiired 
that  surrender  should  be  in  writing.  But  no  such  surrender  of  a 
tenancy  from  year  to  year  had  been  produced.  How,  then,  could 
a  legal  surrender  take  place  ?  If  a  tenant  took  from  his  landlord 
another  agreement  or  lease,  without  more  to  do,  that  would  be  a 
surrender  by  act  and  operation  of  law  of  the  first  lease.  The  tenant 
held  exclusively  under  the  second,  because  having  signed  the  second 
it  would  be  inconsistent  he  should  continue  to  hold  under  the  first. 
Therefore,  on  the  day  that  Philbin  signed  the  secondagreement  to 
give  up  possession,  his  tenancy  was  at  an  end,  and  he  ceased  to 
have  a  shadow  of  legal  right  to  his  holding.  It  was  said  the  inten¬ 
tions  of  the  company  were  very  good.  But  it  was  for  the  jury  to  con¬ 
sider,  if  there  were  110  of  these  papers  to  give  itp  possession 
signed  by  the  tenants,  what  the  intentions  of  the  company  were. 
It  might  be  said  it  was  done  for  the  purpose  of  striping.  But 
did  the  tenants  thereby  part  with  all  legal  right  to  their  holdings  ? 
He  would  tell  them  that  in  point  of  law  they  had,  but  whether  the 


488 


APPENDIX. 


tenants  understood  the  nature  of  it  or  not  was  not  for  him  to  say. 
If  it  was  explained  to  them,  and  that  they  chose  to  execute  it,  the 
law  held  them  bound  by  it.  The  effect  of  the  agreement  to  peace¬ 
ably  surrender  possession  was  that  the  man  who  had  been  the 
tenant  became  the  caretaker  and  nothing  more.  He  had  no  legal 
rights.  The  tenants  who  had  signed  that  were  left  without  a 
shadow  of  legal  right  or  title  of  any  kind  or  description.  They 
remained  there  as  caretakers.  They  could  not  accept  rent  from 
them  then,  because  if  they  did  they  would  be  again  converted 
into  tenants.  It  would  be  for  the  jury  to  say  whether  this  was 
the  most  direct  way  of  establishing  the  fixity  of  tenure  which  had 
been  promised.  (Laughter. )  He  would  then  turn  to  the  alleged 
defamatory  publications.  Questions  arose  on  those  several  publi¬ 
cations.  Mr.  Butt  alleged  the  publication  reflected  on  the  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  plaintiff  as  a  merchant.  His  lordship  here  read  one  of 
the  letters  referring  to  him  solely  as  the  chairman  of  the  com¬ 
pany.  He  epitomized  the  inference  that  could  be  drawn  from  the 
first  letter.  Was  the  statement  in  reference  to  the  seizure  of 
Philip  Henaghan’s  cow,  under  the  circumstances  set  out,  substan¬ 
tially  true  ?  Next,  having  stated  that  particular  case  as  a  founda¬ 
tion  for  his  argument,  he  rose  into  a  general  sphere,  and  expressed 
an  opinion  that  there  was  not  such  oppression  practised  in  Ireland 
for  a  number  of  years  past.  Making  allowance  for  the  excitement 
of  the  moment  and  the  heat  of  argument,  it  would  be  for  them  to 
consider  whether  substantial  foundation  existed  for  the  comment, 
and  if  so  to  what  extent.  They  would  visit  upon  the  defendant 
the  effect  of  any  exaggerated,  or  unnecessary,  or  wanton  expres¬ 
sions.  When  he  said  oppression,  they  would  inquire  was  that 
oppression  in  regard  to  the  management  of  the  estate,  and  to  what 
extent.  They  would  ask,  secondly,  whether  the  general  state¬ 
ments  found  in  that  case,  and  the  others  referred  to  in  the  letter, 
were  substantially  proved.  He  said  about  the  mountain  outlet 
that  the  tenants  were  deprived  of  it,  and  that  it  had  been  seized 
upon  by  the  chairman  and  stocked  with  Welsh  bullocks.  They 
would  have  to  ask  was  that  mountain  outlet  as  described  taken 
possession  of,  or  any  part  of  it,  by  the  manager,  and  was  that 
charge  substantially  true.  The  article  then  went  on  to  say  that 
the  tenants  were  oppressed.  They  would  have  to  ask  were  they 
oppressed — were  seizures  made  on  the  2nd  of  November  for  rent 
due  on  the  1st — were  promissory  notes  taken  from  them,  and  was 
possession  demanded  ?  He  should  say  from  the  signing  of  these 
documents  proved  in  the  case,  that  to  tell  that  the  tenants  under¬ 
stood  the  position  in  which  they  stood  when  they  signed  these 
documents  was  too  strong.  What  Mr.  Lavelle  said  was,  that  they 
were  bewildered,  and  that  a  volley  of  notices  to  quit  was  served 
upon  them.  They  would  ask  were  these  notices  served,  and  was  pos¬ 
session  demanded.  Mr.  Lavelle  then  said  that  the  sequel  followed, 
and  he  (the  chief  justice)  considered  this  to  be  an  important  state¬ 
ment — that  the  rents  were  raised  from  10  to  40  per  cent.,  and 
that  the  tenants  were  made  to  realize  the  sums  charged  before 


APPENDIX. 


480 


they  were  reinstated  in  possession.  He  then  said  that  they  were 
driven  to  distraction,  and  that  Henegan — his  cow  a  prisoner  at 
the  bar  of  Chairman  M  ‘Cullagh — had  resolved  to  quit  the  country. 
They  would  have  to  ask  was  that  fiction — a  thing  invented  by  a 
heated,  extravagant  writer  in  the  country — about  those  rents 
being  raised?  Was  that  true  in  such  a  sense  as  to  justify  his 
appealing  to  the  public  in  regard  to  the  management  of  the  estate 
and  of  Mr.  M‘Cullagh’s  conduct?  Personally,  he  had  only  re¬ 
ferred  to  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  in  a  couple  of  passages,  and  it  would  be 
for  them  to  say,  whether  he  selected  him  as  the  chairman  whose 
name  was  in  the  legal  processes  and  to  the  authority  to  distrain, 
or  that  he  singled  him  out  from  all  the  shareholders  for  malignant 
purposes.  He  said  that  the  tenant  was  driven  into  the  stripe, 
and  that  a  new  rental  was  made,  and  that  was  also  mentioned  in 
the  document  to  which  attention  had  been  called.  Mr.  Lavelle 
said  that  that  rental  would  enhance  the  market  value  of  the 
estate  when  offered  to  a  new  purchaser.  That  looked  like  an 
inference  that  there  was  to  be  a  new  purchaser.  Now,  if  the 
estate  were  handed  over  in  that  way,  that  would  leave  it  open  for 
the  same  operation  to  be  practised  on  the  tenants  again,  for,  until 
they  got  some  title,  they  had  no  security  at  all.  They  would 
have  to  ascertain,  then,  whether  it  was  true  that  the  chairman’s 
cattle  were  feeding  on  grass  for  which  the  tenants  were  paying 
rent.  Respecting  the  mountain,  a  word  has  to  be  said.  If  the 
old  bishop  who  had  granted  the  original  lease — and  who,  he  was 
sure,  had  long  since  gone  to  rest — if  he  had  reserved  in  the  lease 
a  right  of  commonage,  he  would  have  a  right  to  it ;  but  when  the 
whole  was  left  to  the  tenant,  the  question  arose  whether  the 
company  was  bound  to  serve  notice  to  quit  for  the  mountain, 
which  they  had  not  done  ;  and  there,  it  was  inferred,  they  acted 
illegally.  Another  curious  part  of  the  case  arose  in  regard  to  the 
interview  between  Major  Knox  and  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh.  It  con¬ 
stantly  happened,  that  men  of  clear  honor  and  veracity  differed 
as  to  points  of  facts  and  dates.  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  in  assertion  of  his 
right,  called  on  Major  Knox  to  ask  why  he  had  published  that 
letter,  when  the  notices  to  quit  had  existed.  Major  Knox  said 
he  wished  to  have  that  set  right,  and  told  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  to  get 
his  man  of  business  to  draw  up  an  answer,  and  that  he  would 
publish  it  for  him  ;  and  that  if  they  wished  to  have  the  advantage 
of  something  in  the  shape  of  a  leading  article — which  some  people 
thought  was  valuable,  while  other  people  forgot  these  editorial 
articles  sooner  than  they  ought  to  be  forgotten  at  times — he  would 
instruct  one  of  the  editors  to  write  one.  The  next  thing  he  would 
advert  to  was  the  letter  of  Mr.  Proudfoot,  in  which  he  stated  that 
the  letter  of  the  Eev.  Mr.  Lavelle  was  utterly  false,  and  explained 
the  cause  of  distraining  the  cow,  which  he  admitted  took  place  on 
St.  Stephen’s  Day,  the  day  after  Christmas  Day.  He  described 
what  had  taken  place,  and  a  landlord  might  be  perfectly  justified 
in  distraining  under  the  circumstances  ;  but  the  question  was,  was 
there  anything  unusually  severe  in  that  proceeding,  and  was  it 


490 


APPENDIX. 


approved  by  the  proprietors  ?  Mr.  Proudfoot  dealt  with  the 
processes,  and  admitted  that  he  had  to  process  some  of  the  tenants, 
rather  for  the  purpose  of  improving  the  behaviour  of  the  rest,  by 
showing  that  the  company  could  not  be  trifled  with.  Then  he 
turned  round,  and  made  a  very  strong  attack  on  the  Bev.  Mr. 
Lavelle,  and  said  that  upon  one  occasion  that  gentleman  had 
knocked  down  one  of  his  own  parishioners — a  woman — and  kicked 
her.  That  was  a  very  strong  statement ;  but  Major  Knox  pub¬ 
lished  it  for  him.  He  (the  chief  justice)  should  say,  that  looking 
at  that  letter  as  against  Mr.  Lavelle’s,  it  was  more  than  diamond 
cut  diamond.  (Laughter.)  He  did  think  that  the  passage  in  the 
end  of  that  letter  which  he  had  read  was  a  very  strong  one — one 
that,  perhaps,  in  calmer  moments  would  not  have  been  written. 
But,  strange  to  say,  Major  Knox  published  it.  He  did  not  mean 
to  give  advice  to  so  able  and  experienced  a  journalist  as  Major 
Knox.  He  could  only  say  that  a  publication  of  that  nature  was 
likely  to  produce  a  profitable  harvest  for  the  gentlemen  of  the 
law.  (Laughter.)  In  a  day  or  two  after,  the  editorial  article  was 
written,  and  stated  how  Mr.  Lavelle’s  letter  had  been  published, 
and  answered  by  Mr.  Proudfoot,  that  the  distress  had  been  made 
on  a  comfortable  man  who  was  about  to  emigrate — that  the’  con¬ 
troversy  was  one  that  should  be  decided  in  a  court  of  law,  and 
not  in  the  columns  of  a  newspaper — and  then  a  panegyric  on  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  and  his  brother  directors.  He  ventured  to  say,  if  the 
matter  rested  there — after  Major  Knox  had  published  Proudfoot’s 
letter,  and  afterwards  a  leading  article  upon  it— it  might  be 
difficult  to  persuade  a  jury  to  give  damages  upon  it.  If  a  person 
who  thought  himself  aggrieved  called  on  an  editor,  and  told 
what  he  wanted,  then  obtained  an  editorial  article,  setting  right 
his  ground  of  complaint,  he  thought  it  would  be  rather  hard  to 
call  on  a  jury  to  visit  with  considerable  damages  a  proprietor 
who  did  what  he  was  asked  to  do.  The  reason  he  thus  went  into 
the  merits,  and  facts,  and  law  of  the  case,  was,  that  it  was  said 
the  matter  was  opened  up  afterwards.  Major  Knox  told  Mr. 
M ‘Cullagh,  when  he  called  on  him,  that  another  letter  was  sure  to 
draw  forth  a  reply.  He  evidently  knew  the  kind  of  man  the 
Bev.  Patrick  Lavelle  was — that  he  wras  only  watching  for  an 
opportunity  to  publish — and  he  told  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  that  he  would 
be  obliged  to  publish  the  reply.  Mr. M ‘Cullagh,  on  being  recalled, 
said  no  such  thing  occurred.  However,  that  was  a  fact  for  the 
jury  to  decide — it  did  not  materially  touch  the  case.  It  happened 
just  as  Major  Knox  had  said.  Mr.  Lavelle  had  published  a  long 
letter,  in  which  there  were  only  three  or  four  lines  selected  as 
being  defamatory  of  the  plaintiff.  That  letter  was  called,  “How 
to  evict  without  notice  to  quit.”  The  next  letter  Mr.  Lavelle 
addressed  to  the  Irish  Times  was  entitled,  “How  to  evict  without 
notice.”  He  first  scolded  the  editor  of  the  Irish  Times  for  his 
exculpatory  article,  and  he  was  disappointed  that  Major  Knox 
should  have  written  so  plausible  and  reasonable  an  article  upon 
the  gentlemen  who  conducted  the  Association.  He  said  he 


APPENDIX. 


491 


thought  the  journal  was  partizan  in  publishing  Mr.  Proudfoot’s 
letter.  He  said  that  it  was  a  matter  which  should  be  considered  in 
a  court  of  law,  and  accordingly,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  he 
determined  it  should  be  so,  and  with  satisfaction  to  himself  he 
got  into  law.  (Laughter.)  He  said  the  Irish  Times  was  an  ac¬ 
complice  by  reason  of  the  article,  and  he  set  out  a  complaint  of 
Mr.  Proudfoot’s  letter.  Mr.  Lavelle  took  an  objection — took  the 
cattle  belonging  to  Mr.  M'Cullagh  on  Derassa  mountain.  It  was 
for  the  jury  to  say  whether  the  paragraph  complained  of  by  Mr. 
M  ‘Cullagh  reflected  upon  his  personal  honor  or  mercantile  cha¬ 
racter  or  reputation,  whom  every  person  respected  as  a  merchant 
and  a  gentleman.  Mr.  Lavelle  said  he  never  made  auy  allusion  to 
Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  save  as  chairman  of  the  company.  He  said  that  the 
tenants  were  deprived  of  their  mountain  outlet,  and  their  pasture 
was  consumed  by  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh’ s  stock.  He  next  set  out  a  number 
of  grievances,  speaking  very  strongly  of  the  case  of  Andrew 
Gibbons.  In  his  letter  he  dealt  with  the  management  of  the 
estate,  and  never  spoke  of  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  though  he  seemed  to 
have  a  grudge  to  his  cattle  being  on  the  land  ;  and  it  was  for  the 
jury  to  say  whether  there  was  reasonable  ground  for  assuming 
and  believing  the  existence  of  the  matters  stated  as  matters  of 
fact.  After  that  came  the  letter  of  the  5th  of  February,  which 
was  the  gravamen  of  the  case  on  the  part  of  the  plaintiff.  Mr. 
Lavelle  in  that  letter  spoke  of  “the  system  of  fleecing,  in  the 
shape  of  unnecessary  law-costs  and  fines  and  penalties  ;  of  in¬ 
creased  rack-rents,  and  the  seizure  of  the  people’s  grass  without 
form  of  law,”  and  the  seizure  of  their  turf- banks.  He  said  that 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  appropriated  the  pasture  from  the  tenants,  and 
“  who  among  the  robbed  dare  resist  the  seizure  ?”  It  was  argued 
for  the  plaintiff  that  that  statement  transcended  the  bounds  of 
fair  discussion.  If  it  implied  burglary  to  Air.  M‘Cullagh  it  would 
be  defamatory,  but  they  must  take  it  with  the  context.  Mr. 
Lavelle  said  that  the  tenants  were  robbed  of  the  grass,  but  it 
would  be  better,  as  Mr.  Butt  had  said,  that  Mr.  Lavelle  was 
more  moderate  in  the  use  of  his  pen.  They  must  look  at  the 
phrase,  and  see  whether  it  touched  the  personal  honor  or  com¬ 
mercial  fame  of  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh.  They  next  came  to  the  letter 
that  w7as  addressed  to  the  shareholders  by  Mr.  Lavelle,  only 
one  paragraph  in  which  was  complained  of  ;  but  it  was  a  cardinal 
rule  as  to  every  paper,  book,  or  document  that  might  be  laid  be¬ 
fore  them,  that  they  were  to  look  at  the  whole  of  it.  As  was 
judiciously  observed  by  a  great  writer,  they  might  get  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  to  say  “There  is  no  God,”  if  they  did  not  look  at  the  whole 
phrase,  “  The  fool  has  said  in  his  heart  there  is  no  God.”  It  was 
not  by  one  paragraph  that  they  were  to  judge  of  the  composition. 
His  lordship  read  a  portion  of  the  letter,  and  the  part  complained 
of  by  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh,  with  reference  to  the  summons  served  upon 
Widow  Gibbons,  and  then  Mr.  Lavelle  spoke  of  what  he  called  “a 
system  of  fleecing,”  and  said  that  the  tenants  were  at  the  mercy  of 
Mr.  M ‘Cullagh.  It  was  for  the  jury  to  judge  had  he  the  teuauts 


492 


APPENDIX. 


at  his  mercy.  He  had  explained  to  them  that  if  the  document 
existed  they  were  all  at  the  mercy  of  the  company,  and  so  far  as 
that  part  of  the  matter  was  concerned  it  was  true,  but  it  was  for 
them  to  say  whether  the  statements  were  fiction  or  facts.  Mr. 
Lavelle  said  that  the  demesne  of  Port  Royal  was  in  the  possession 
of  Mr.  M‘Cullagh,  and  complained  of  it,  and  that  the  tenant  who 
had  been  in  possession  had  been  evicted,  and  had  got  no  chance  in 
competing  for  it.  Money  was  expended  on  the  house  and  offices, 
but  the  tenant  was  Mr.  Proudfoot,  and  not  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh.  Mr. 
Lavelle  further  stated  that  Mr.  M  ‘Cullagh  paid  no  rent  for  Derassa, 
and  that  the  tenants  were  assessed  illegally.  With  reference  to 
the  parable  of  Nathan,  all  the  learned  counsel  had  addressed  them 
upon  it,  and,  no  doubt,  questions  from  the  record  of  their  faith  had 
better  be  made  with  caution.  They  were  always  instructive  if  well 
applied  ;  but  they  were  not  sitting  to  judge  of  the  literary  taste  of 
anybody.  Their  duty  was  to  consider  if  these  statements  were 
libellous  and  defamatory,  and  did  they  exceed  the  limits  of 
propriety  and  reason.  There  could  not  be  a  doubt  if  the  words 
meant  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  was  worthy  of  death,  and  that  he  was 
held  up  to  assassination  or  anything  of  that  nature,  it  would  trans¬ 
cend  the  bounds,  at  once,  of  fair  comment  upon  improper  and  illegal 
conduct,  if  it  was  illegal,  of  the  chairman  and  company.  The  best 
way  of  understanding  it  was  to  read  the  story  as  it  occurred.  It 
was,  like  everything  else  in  the  book,  of  divine  simplicity.  His 
lordship  then  read  the  extract  from  the  Old  Testament,  and  said, 
so  far  as  he  could  make  out  its  application,  Mr.  Lavelle  meant  to 
say  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  being  rich  had  taken  from  the  poor  that 
which  he  ought  not  to  have  done,  and  if  one  could  understand  the 
conclusion  of  the  parable,  when  David  pronounced  sentence,  it  was 
sentence  on  himself,  though  he  did  not  know  it,  and  they  could 
understand  this  to  mean  that  Mr.  M ‘Cullagh  would  pronounce 
sentence  on  himself  and  make  restoration  as  pointed  out  in  the 
parable.  If  that  were  the  meaning  it  was  excusable,  but  if  it 
meant  to  point  him  out  to  anything  like  death— if  that  could  be 
held  to  be  the  meaning — of  course  there  was  no  excuse  for  the 
publication.  In  that  letter  he  spoke  of  “  these  robberies.”  That 
was  very  strong  language.  He  did  not  say  that  they  had 
plundered  the  tenants  of  their  purses  or  cattle,  but  he  described  the 
management  of  the  estate  as  robbery.  The  last  letter  was  a  sum¬ 
mary  of  Mr.  Lavelle’s  arguments,  and  it  was  for  the  jury  to  con¬ 
sider  whether  or  not  it  gave  a  significance  to  the  whole,  or  whether 
that  particular  passage  with  reference  to  robbery  changed  the 
commentary  on  a  public  matter,  viz.,  the  management  of  the 
estate,  into  a  private  assault  upon  the  private  character  of  Mr. 
M ‘Cullagh.  Up  to  that  time  he  had  nothing  before  him  to  show 
that  there  was  any  legal  right  or  title  to  these  people.  He 
observed  that  the  people  were  told  to  sign,  sign,  sign.-  That  was 
certainly  proved  to  be  true.  Here  was  one  of  the  documents, 
which  was  the  climax  of  the  whole.  Whether  these  Irish- speaking 
witnesses— and  certainly,  as  Mr.  Brett  had  said,  they  seemed  to  be 


APPENDIX. 


493 


evry  amenable  to  advice  and  direction — understood  what  they  were 
signing,  he  could  not  take  it  on  himself  to  say.  If  there  was  a 
question  arising  between  one  of  these  Irish-speaking  tenants  and 
the  company,  and  that  the  latter  was  binding  him  by  his  proposal, 
the  tenant  knowing  the  nature  of  the  document  he  was  signing,  he 
should  tell  the  jury,  such  tenant  would  be  bound  by  that  docu¬ 
ment,  while  the  company  would  be  bound  to  nothing.  In  reading 
over  these  documents  it  did  occur  to  him  that  they  exhibited  a 
degree  of  skill  superior  to  that  of  any  ordinary  provincial  practi¬ 
tioner.  Although  the  ultimate  object  might  be  right,  the  manner 
in  which  each  document  succeeded  the  other  was  very  remarkable, 
and  required  considerable  attention  in  order  to  understand  them. 
He  doubted  whether  Mr.  Lavelle,  when  writing  these  letters, 
thoroughly  understood  the  law  on  this  matter.  By  this  second 
document  all  the  tenants  were  made  mere  caretakers.  It  was 
drawn  up  and  printed  in  Dublin ;  it  was  called  a  tenant’s  proposal ; 
and  was  sent  down  stamped  to  the  country.  This  was  then  pre¬ 
sented  to  those  people  who  were  marksmen.  They  could  not  read 
it,  and  must  have  depended  on  the  honesty  of  the  person  who 
translated  it  to  them.  The  dates  were  very  interesting.  The  little 
document  which  made  them  caretakers  was  dated  the  13th 
November,  and  the  people  remained  nothing  but  caretakers,  liable 
to  be  turned  out  at  any  moment,  until  they  signed  the  document 
in  February,  1869.  That  was  a  very  curious  position  for  men  to 
be  placed  in  from  November  to  February,  without  any  legal  right 
whatever.  It  might  be  said,  and  he  had  no  doubt  they  did,  that 
the  company  meant  to  do  what  was  right ;  but  he  was  only  taking 
facts  as  they  appeared  before  the  mind  of  the  writer,  and  whether 
he  had  a  right  to  comment  on  them.  Now  this  document  was 
dated  the  16th  February,  and  very  adroitly,  although  he  had  been 
a  caretaker,  not  liable  to  pay  rent,  it  bound  the  tenant  to  pay  rent 
from  the  very  day  that  he  commenced  as  caretaker,  namely,  as  far 
back  as  the  1st  November  previous,  on  which  his  tenancy  expired. 
A  person  would  usually  say  to  a  caretaker,  “  I  want  my  premises, 
but  here  it  was  said,  “You  must  pay  me  for  being  my  caretaker.  ”  It 
was  a  very  curious  thing  for  a  tenant  to  propose  all  this.  First 
the  rent  was  nearly  doubled  ;  in  one  instance  that  which  had  been 
£1  16s.  3d.  a  year  was  raised  to  £3  16s.  8d.  These  men  were  said 
to  propose  what  he  believed  no  man  in  his  right  mind  would  pro¬ 
pose.  He  was  not  to  have  a  lodger  ;  but  some  of  these  poor  people 
would  give  a  night’s  lodging  for  nothing.  The  poultry  were  not 
to  be  permitted  to  go  into  their  house.  He  would  not  read  all 
the  limitations.  They  might  provoke  a  smile  ;  but  a  breach  of  any 
of  them  rendered  the  tenant  liable  to  a  fine  of  £10.  Certainly,  if 
those  men  signed  that  document,  and  that  an  action  was 
brought  against  any  of  them,  he  should  direct  the  jury  that 
they  were  responsible  for  the  fine.  Well,  the  tenant  having 
signed  that,  was  no  longer  a  tenant,  but  a  caretaker.  It  gave 
him  no  right,  and  a  person  making  such  a  proposal  would  not  be 
tenant  till  the  owner  accex>ted  rent  and  put  his  name  to  the  paper. 


494 


APPENDIX. 


He  told  them  that  at  that  moment  any  of  the  tenants  who  had 
signed  that  adroit  paper  as  caretaker,  and  who  had  not  yet  paid 
rent,  were  no  more  tenants  than  any  of  the  jury.  He  did  not 
-want  to  oblige  the  company  to  give  fixity  of  tenure,  but  when  a 
newspaper  writer  was  brought  before  the  jury  for  commenting,  no 
doubt  with  considerable  freedom,  on  these  transactions,  the  nature 
of  such  transactions  should  be  laid  fully  bare.  He  would  leave 
the  whole  question  to  the  jury  to  consider,  namely,  whether  a 
newspaper  writer,  in  commenting  on  these  transactions,  had  trans¬ 
gressed  that  freedom  of  discussion  on  a  matter  which  had  reference 
to  a  public  concern,  for  it  touched  110  families,  representing 
nearly  3,000  people.  Well,  such  being  the  state  of  affairs,  he 
would  now  shortly  call  their  attention  to  the  evidence.  It  was  for 
the  jury  to  say  whether  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  had  been  mistaken  for 
Mr.  Proudfoot,  and  whether  propriety  had  been  exceeded.  His 
lordship  then  referred  to  Mr.  M'Cullagh’s  evidence.  He  said  he 
had  never  seen  the  processes  before,  but  he  said  he  knew  of  the 
notices  to  quit,  which  he  signed.  He  also  admitted  that  he  had 
put  his  cattle  on  the  mountain,  not  having  previously  demanded 
any  possession  from  the  tenants.  Was  it  fair  to  comment  on  that 
and  on  the  notices  and  processes  being  served  ?  Having  read  the 
evidence  of  the  plaintiff,  his  lordship  said  it  was  for  the  jury  to 
consider  wdiether  it  lessened  the  case  made  on  behalf  of  the  de¬ 
fendant,  or  how  it  went  to  show  he  had  been  personally  assailed 
in  his  private  relations  of  life.  Proudfoot  was  then  examined, 
and  the  tenants,  no  doubt,  entertained  a  different  opinion  from 
the  opinion  expressed  by  him.  It  appeared  from  the  evidence 
that  there  wras  to  be  a  new  rental,  but  that  rental  had  not  yet 
been  produced,  and  that  was  a  very  ticklish  subject.  The  figures 
as  to  the  valuation  of  the  land  were  very  material  in  considering 
the  several  allegations  of  the  increase  of  rent.  The  evidence,  no 
doubt,  supported  the  assertion  made  in  one  of  the  letters,  that  the 
rent  was  increased  far  above  the  value.  It  was  greatly  to  be 
regretted  that  the  intentions  of  the  company  were  not  completed 
before  the  trial,  because  the  intentions  of  a  man  could  not  be 
known  to  a  public  writer.  He  should  be  excused  if  he  dealt  with 
facts  as  they  presented  themselves.  His  lordship  then  proceeded 
to  read  in  detail  the  evidence  adduced  both  on  behalf  of  the 
plaintiff  and  defendant.  Then  they  had  the  evidence  of  Major 
Knox.  He  said  that  he  published  Proudfoot’s  letter  before  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh  complained,  but  Mr.  M‘Cullagh  thought  the  letter  was 
not  published  till  afterwards.  It  was  plain  there  was  some  confusion 
as  to  that,  but  there  was  no  doubt  Major  Knox’s  recollection  was  ac¬ 
curate  in  the  matter,  because  he  was  a  business  man,  conversaut 
daily  with  facts  and  dates.  However,  it  did  not  at  all  affect  the  ques¬ 
tion  in  the  case.  Kow,  if  the  editor  of  a  newspaper  published  an 
answer  to  any  charge  that  was  made  in  the  columns  of  his  paper 
against  another  person,  then  he  was  bound  to  tell  them  that  it  took 
away  very  much  from  the  sting  of  what  was  a  libel  before.  Having 
read  over  the  evidence  of  Major  Knox  and  Philip  Henaghan,  and 


APPENDIX. 


495 


alluded  to  tlie  documentary  evidence  handed  in  in  the  case,  his 
lordship  concluded  as  follows: — That,  gentlemen,  concludes  the 
whole  of  this  important  case.  I  felt  it  my  duty,  after  the  lapse 
of  time  that  has  occurred,  to  read  over  to  you  my  notes  of  the 
evidence,  and  for  these  reasons — I  have  already  explained  what 
you'  have  to  consider  is,  firstly,  whether  this  was  a  public  matter 
— this  company  and  its  management  of  the  Port  Royal  estate.  It 
is  not  impossible  that  you  may  agree  with  Mr.  Heron  that  it  is 
and  was  a  public  matter,  and  a  question  of  interest  to  a  large 
portion  of  the  community,  and  by  its  prospectus  and  reports 
given  to  the  public  it  invited  discussion.  That  will  be  the  first 
matter  for  your  consideration.  Secondly,  you  will  have  to  con¬ 
sider  whether  what  the  defendant  published  he  published  fairly, 
in  regard  to  a  public  matter,  having  reasonable  ground  for  what 
he  so  published — though  he  may  have  made  a  mistake,  and 
drawn  erroneous  inferences  from  what  is  submitted  to  be  the 
fact — still  without  malice,  bona  fide  to  bring  a  matter  of  public 
interest  before  the  public  he  published  what  he  did — you  may 
consider  him  excused.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  adopt  the  view 
pressed  on  you  by  counsel  at  the  other  side,  that  while  the  defend¬ 
ant  might  discuss  the  conduct  of  the  company,  the  operations  of 
the  company,  and  the  management  of  the  company,  and  comment 
even  with  severity  on  the  several  topics  to  which  I  have  alluded 
and  endeavored  at  great  length  to  explain,  that  yet  he  passed  the 
boundary  of  that  free,  manly,  and  sincere  discussion,  by  charges 
which  it  has  been  stated  by  the  learned  counsel  reflected  on  Mr. 
M‘Cullagh,  not  only  as  chairman  of  the  company,  but  on  him  as 
a  gentleman  of  honor  and  a  merchant  of  eminence  in  your  city — 
if  you  can  see  your  way  to  that  latter  conclusion,  then,  in  my~ 
opinion,  according  to  the  law  of  the  country,  the  defendant  is 
responsible ;  but  if,  on  the  other  hand,  you  believe  in  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  plea,  that  what  he  published  he  has  published  as  a 
fair,  free,  reasonable,  and  truthful  comment  of  a  public  matter,  of 
public  interest,  in  the  assertion  of  that  right  of  the  privileges  of 
the  press — not  an  extravagant  or  licentious  press,  but  a  well 
organized  press,  guarded  and  guided  by  the  laws  of  the  country — 
if  he  published  in  that  right,  you  may,  if  you  believe  his  evidence, 
find  a  verdict  for  the  defendant.  If  you  find  for  the  plaiutiff  the 
question  of  damages  will  arise,  and  that  is  a  subject  entirely  for 
your  consideration.  The  counsel  for  the  plaintiff  has  told  you 
that  it  was  not  so  much  for  damages  the  action  was  brought,  and 
on  the  first  question  at  least  the  damages  must  be  sender  at 
any  rate.  But  it  will  be  for  you  to  •  consider  whether  the  defend¬ 
ant  has  transgressed  the  limits  of  that  fair  and  free  right  of  com¬ 
ment,  which  ever  will,  as  long  as  liberty  lasts  in  the  country,  be, 

I  hope,  the  right,  and  the  fair  and  free  privilege  of  the  press. 

At  half-past  three  o’clock  the  jury  returned  to  court,  when 

The  foreman  said  there  was  no  probability  of  them  agreeing  to 
a  verdict  in  the  case. 

Alderman  Tarpey — We  are  not  all  of  that  opinion. 


APPENDIX. 


406 

His  lordship — You  have  not  long  been  considering  the  case  yet. 
We  are  quietly  proceeding  with  another  case  here  now,  and  that 
is  an  advantage  to  you.  I  was  afraid  you  would  not  like  to  come 
out  until  we  were  embarked  in  another  case.  (Laughter.)  Is 
there  any  question  on  which  I  could  assist  you  ? 

Mr.  Nolan — I  think  we  are  unanimous  on  nearly  all  points, 
with  the  exception  of  the  paragraph  in  the  letter  bearing  reference 
to  the  child  of  death.  Some  of  the  jury  are  apprehensive  that 
that  is  a  very  strong  phrase. 

His  lordship — Have  you  got  the  paper  itself  ? 

Mr.  Nolan — We  have  not,  my  lord. 

His  lordship— The  best  thing  for  you  to  do  is  to  take  the 
written  document  itself  and  consider  it. 

Foreman — We  have  it  all  off  by  heart.  (Laughter.) 

His  lordship — Take  the  paper  itself  aud  read  the  context. 

The  jury  again  retired,  the  paper  containing  the  letter  referred 
to  being  handed  to  them. 

At  twenty  minutes  past  four  o’clock  the  jury  again  came  into 
court,  and 

The  foreman  said  there  was  not  the  least  possibility  of  their 
agreeing  in  the  case — not  the  slightest. 

His  lordship  (to  the  jury) — Gentlemen,  is  what  the  foreman 
states  correct,  that  there  is  no  prospect  of  your  agreeing  to  a 
verdict  ? 

Mr.  Kenny — Not  the  slightest  chance. 

His  lordship  (to  Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.) — Have  you  any  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  defendant  to  retain  these  gentlemen  longer  ?  They 
say  there  is  no  prospect  of  their  agreeing  to  a  verdict. 

Mr.  Heron,  Q.C.' — I  will  leave  it  entirely  with  your  lordship. 

Mr.  Johnston,  Q.C. — On  the  part  of  the  plaintiff,  I  will  leave 
the  matter  with  your  lordship. 

His  lordship — I  should  be  glad,  indeed,  there  was  a  verdict, 
because  disagreements  are  very  rare,  indeed,  in  this  court.  Since 
I  had  the  honor  to  sit  here,  I  believe  there  was  but  one  disagree¬ 
ment  before — and  that  was  whether  a  man  should  have  Gd.  or 
nothing.  (Laughter.)  I  am  very  sorry,  gentlemen,  that  you 
cannot  agree. 

The  foreman — We  have  tried  the  case  in  every  possible  way. 

His  lordship — You  are  the  judges  of  matters  of  fact,  and  if  you 
tell  me  that  there  is  no  probability  of  your  agreeing,  and  if  the 
parties  don’t  interfere,  the  best  thing  I  can  do  is  to  discharge  you. 

A  juror — Thank  your  lordship. 

His  lordship— But  I  don’t  discharge  you  altogether.  You  will 
have  to  be  here  again  to-morrow.  (Laughter.) 

The  jury  were  then  discharged. 

[There  were  ELEVEN  of  the  jury  for  finding  in  favor  of  the 
defendant,  Major  Knox,  and  one  man  would  not  agree  to  a 
verdict.] 


APPENDIX. 


497 


* 


LETTER 

TO  THE  RIGHT  HON.  E.  W.  CARDWELL, 

/ 

ETC.,  ETC.  • 


Dublin,  22nd  April,  1861 

Sir, — In  the  debate  on  Mr.  Vincent  Scully’s  question  relative 
to  the  recent  evictions  in  Donegal,  you  are  reported  to  have  said  : 
“With  regard  to  these  wholesale  evictions,  they  were  happily 
now  becoming  extremely  rare  in  Ireland  ;  but  it  was  not  possible 
to  hear  of  a  case  of  the  kind  without  feelings  of  the  greatest  com¬ 
miseration  for  those  who  were  the  subjects  of  it.  There  must 
have  been  many  persons  involved  in  the  sufferings  who  could  not 
have  been  parties  to  any  guilty  transaction.” 

'  In  these  observations  there  are  two  things  which  must  be  con¬ 
sidered  very  widely  asunder — one  the  expression  of  feeling,  the 
other  an  affirmation  of  fact.  In  the  former  there  is  hardly  a  man 
in  the  community,  with  the  instincts  of  a  man  in  his  bosom,  who 
will  not  concur  with  you.  “It  is  not  possible  to  hear  of  those 
cases  without  feelings  of  the  greatest  commiseration.”  What  then 
must  it  be  to  witness  such  terrible  scenes  ?  If  the  mere  recital 
or  perusal  of  such  deeds  makes  the  heart  of  every  right-minded 
man  sink  within  him,  what  would  be  his  feelings  at  beholding 
with  his  own  eyes  their  actual  perpetration  ?  Had  you  been  in 
Glenveagh  the  other  day  when  the  widow  and  her  six  children 
were  flung  out  of  their  humble  home — when  the  thirty-six  women 
and  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  children  made  the  hills  echo 
with  their  shrieks  ; — were  you  in  Partry  on  the  21st,  22nd,  and 
23rd  of  last  November,  to  behold  a  similar  scene  enacted,  not  by 
a  Mr.  Adair — a  nobody,  except  in  his  purse — but  by  a  man  who 
signs  himself  “Bishop  of  Tuam,  and  Peer  of  Ireland” — by  the 
Right  Rev.  and  Right  Honorable  Thomas  Lord  Plunket — what 
would  be  the  emotions  that  would  arise  within  you  ?  Let  me  tell 
you  what  I  saw  in  Partry  during  those  terrible  days  in  which  the 
“  Bishop  of  Tuam  ”  preached  his  gospel  at  the  point  of  the  crowbar. 
I  saw  a  woman,  Mrs.  Tom  Lally,  dragged  by  the  head  and  shoulders 

2  I 


498 


ArPENDIX. 


out  of  her  house,  her  bosom  thus  exposed,  and  her  hair  dishev¬ 
elled.  ‘I  saw  her  husband  in  the  gripe  of  four  men,  dragged 
out  like  a  butchered  calf,  and  flung  on  the  dunghill.  I  saw  an  old 
man,  80  years  of  age,  and  his  wife,  74,  tottering  out  of  a  house 
which  had  seen  their  great  grandparents,  and  standing  by  with 
streaming  eyes,  amid  torrents  of  sleet  and  rain,  as  the  venerable 
roof  and  walls  crumbled  to  the  ground.  I  saw  the  young  mother, 
and  the  babe  at  her  bosom,  linger  on  the  threshold  they  were  never 
to  cross  again.  I  saw  the  cradle,  in  which  slept  the  happily  un¬ 
conscious  child,  carried  out  by  the  father,  the  rain  beating  with 
fury  on  the  innocent  brow.  I  saio  the  pot  of  potatoes,  intended  for 
the  morning's  meed,  taken  off  the  fife  and  flung  on  the  clung-heap 
In  one  word,  sir,  I  saw  extermination  in  its  worst  of  forms,  car¬ 
ried  out  by  the  “Bishop  of  Tuam  and  Peer  of  Ireland,”  and  that 
under  the  aegis  of  her  majesty’s  police  and  military.  Well,  the 
man  who  did  all  this,  not  alone  still  holds  the  commission  of  her 
majesty’s  peace,  but  even  still  wears  the  mitre  conferred  by  her 
majesty  ; — not  alone  still  claims,  by  lettei's  of  the  lord  chancellor, 
to  dispense  right  and  justice  to  others,  but  even  by  a  mission 
from  above,  to  teach  the  sublime  and  holy  lessons  of  God’s  holy 
word,  in  which  no  lesson  is  so  frequently  or  so  earnestly  urged  as 
that  “  of  doing  mercy,  and  not  persecuting  the  poor  and  broken  of 
heart.”  Ah!  sir,  may  we  not  well  *  “  congratulate  Lord  Plunket 
that  he  is  not  bishop  in  the  Roman  States !  To  what  accusations 
would  he  not  then  be  exposed  throughout  England  ?” 

Yes,  sir ;  Lord  Plunket,  who,  during  three  days  of  last 
November,  evicted  some  sixty-nine  souls,  under  the  most  heart¬ 
rending  circumstances,  is  still  a  magistrate  of  that  county,  a 
bishop  of  that  diocese,  in  which,  as  the  Times  has  not  hesitated 
to  designate  his  conduct,  he  has  been  guilty  of  such  a  “Hideous 
Scandal” — one  so  great  that,  rather  than  give  the  example  of  it, 

‘  ‘  he  should  have  died  by  the  ditch-side,  or  flung  himself  on  the 
charity  of  his  diocese.”  Not  alone  that,  sir  ;  but  within  the  last 
few  years  he  aud  his  sister  have,  unheard,  unfelt,  unknown, 
unperceived  by  the  world,  evicted  more  than  twice  that  number, 
with  a  list  of  whose  names  I  shall  close  this  letter. 

So  much  for  the  evictions  themselves. 

Now  for  the  grounds  of  that  “  Hideous  Scandal.” 

Lord  Plunket  and  his  apologists  have  so  involved  themselves  in 
contradictions,  that,  taking  their  statements  together,  no  man 
living  can  say  what  was  the  real  motive.  Thus,  the  attorney, 
Mr.  Martin,  assigned  “  striping  the  land.  ”  Lord  Plunket  comes 
next,  and  in  a  letter  vouches  for  the  truth  of  reasons  in  which 
there  is  not  a  syllable  about  “striping.”  Next  comes  the  agent, 
in  a  letter  to  the  Times,  with  a  series  of  grounds,  which  entirely 
exclude  both  those  of  Mr.  Martin  and  Lord  Plunket  himself. 
Again,  Lord  Plunket  himself  comes  forward,  and,  “on  his 
solemn  oath,”  swears  that  “  striping  the  land,"  and  Mr.  Lavelle’s 


*  bishop  of  Orleans’  Letter 


APPENDIX. 


499 


acting  as  landlord,”  were  his  real  motives,  though,  in  the  rea¬ 
sons  “for  the  truth  of  which  he  vouched,”  there  is  not  a  word 
about  either.  Again  comes  the  Morning  Post,  with  a  set  of  new 
reasons,  either  never  before  alleged,  or  expressly  repudiated  by 
Lord  Plunket’s  agent ;  while,  to  crown  all,  Lord  Plunket  appears 
in  person,  for  the  third  time,  and  writes  over  to  the  British  am¬ 
bassador  in  Paris,  admitting  the  “  hideous  scandal  ”  itself,  but 
protesting  motives  partly  similar  to  those  of  Mr.  Adair ;  and 
designating,  in  French  somewhat  grating  to  the  delicate  ear  of 
the  Parisians,  a  “  scaffolding  of  lies”  every  syllable  of  a  sermon 
not  yet  preached  by  the  illustrious  Bishop  of  Orleans.  But  the 
worst  feature  in  all  this  web  of  contradictions  is  the  fact  that 
though  Lord  Plunket  has  sworn  that  his  object  was  to  stripe  [i.e., 
divide  the  land  into  separate  lots),  every  perch  of  the  evicted 
tenants’  land  had  been  striped  four  or  five  years  ago,  except  two 
holdings  !  It  is  for  Lord  Plunket  himself  to  reconcile  his  word 
with  his  oath,  his  oath  with  the  fact,  and  either  or  both  with  the 
allegations  of  his  over-zealous  apologists. 

But,  sir,  without  extending  into  tedious  details,  let  me.  men¬ 
tion  a  few  facts. 

Lord  Plunket  has  established  proselytizing  schools  in  his  pro¬ 
perty.  To  these  he  directed  “all  his  tenants”  to  send  their 
children.  He  conveyed  his  order  in  a  printed  notice,  under  the 
mild  and  modest  form  of  “his  earnest  desire,”  which  he  declared 
“  he  would  impress  upon  them  at  every  opportunity,”  adding  that 
“henceforth  he  would  serve  notice  to  quit  before  the  first  of  May 
every  year  on  all  his  tenants  throughout  the  estate.”  The  manner 
in  which  this  earnest  desire  had  been  carried  out  was  fully  re¬ 
vealed  at  the  Galway  trial,  upon  the  uncontradicted  evidence  of 
eighteen  witnesses,  in  the  presence  of  Lord  Plunket  aud  of  his 
entire  family.  It  was  shown  that  incessant  domiciliary  visits, 
incessant  threats  of  eviction,  notices  to  quit,  and  banishment, 
were  the  simple  methods  whereby  his  lordship  “impressed  his 
earnest  desire.”  The  minister  and  the  “ladies,”  his  lordship’s 
daughters,  with  people  called  “Scripture-readers  and  mission- 
teachers,”  never  ceased  going  from  house  to  house,  demanding  the 
children  on  pain  of  eviction.  In  their  rounds  they  would  force  in 
doors  barred  against  them,  as  they  did  those  of  Mrs.  Henaghan, 
Mrs.  Morrin — find  men  hiding  from  them  behind  boxes — pull  out 
the  tongues  of  children — tell  mothers  they  “  would  have  to  beg” 
if  they  refused  the  children.  The  parents  would  hide,  or  make 
off  to  the  fields — or,  alas  !  what  demoralization  !  make  lying  ex¬ 
cuses — or  keep  their  children  naked — or  hide  them  under  the  beds 
— or  devise  some  other  means  of  evading  the  “  earnest  desire  thus 
impressed  at  every  opportunity.”  These  are  no  mere  assertions 
of  mine.  They  are  the  sworn  and  uncontroverted  evidence  of 
eighteen  witnesses— -and  more,  of  sixty-seven,  had  not  the  judge 
and  jury  thought  that  abundant  evidence  wTas  given  of  the  facts 
at  issue. 


500 


APPENDIX. 


Well,  these  efforts  were  not  without  fruit.  Some  stoutly  re¬ 
fused,  and  they  were  evicted  ;  some  gave  lying  excuses,  and  they 
escaped  for  the  while  ;  the  rest  yielded,  and  were  left  undisturbed. 
Lord  Plunket  never  evicted  a  man  who  sent  his  children  to  the 
proselytizing  school.  Up  to  the  period  of  my  appoiutment, 
he  evicted  every  soul  who  refused,  and  gave  no  hope  of 
yielding  !  ! ! 

The  following  is  the  list,  with  their  actual  families,  including  a 
few  evicted  by  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket : — 


John  Durcan, 

Widow  Walsh,  ... 
Watt  Staunton,  jun., 
Martin  Lally, 
Matthew  Lally,  ... 
Michael  Smyth,  ... 
James  Costelloe, 
Thomas  Boyle, 
Austin  Higgins,  ... 
Patrick  Walsh,  ... 
Pat  Staunton, 
Widow  Cain, 

Michael  Walsh,  .. 
John  Boyle, 

Pat  Boyle, 

Widow  Walsh  (2nd), 
Thomas  Lally, 
Martin  Lally, 

Pat  Murray, 

Ned  Joyce, 

Pat  Lally, 

John  Boyle, 

Michael  Cavanagh, 
James  Henaghan, 
Widow  Lally, 
Michael  Henaghan, 
John  Walsh, 

Tom  Quinn, 


6  in  family. 

4  — 

10  — 

9  — 

5  — 

7  — 

5  — 

6  — 

6  — 

6  — 

4  — 

4  — 

7  — 

8  — 

4  — 

4  — 

10  — 

5  - 

5  — 

4  _ 

8  — 

7  — 

5  — 

4  — 

7  — 

3  — 

7  — 


The  above  were  all  solvent,  and  most  of  them  very  comfortable 
tenants,  not  owing  a  farthing  rent.  Their  places  were  given  up  to 
bullocks,  to  Protestant  settlers,  or  to  Catholics  who  sent  their 
children  to  school.  The  list  does  not  contain  the  names  of  the 
inhabitants  of  two  whole  villages,  the  Tourmakeadies,  evicted  by 
the^bishop’s  relative,  to  enlarge  his  lordship’s  farm. 

Now,  the  bishop  may  say,  and  has  sworn,  that  it  was  not 


APPENDIX. 


501 


on  account  of  the  schools  he  evicted  those  poor  people.  But 
there  is  the  stern  fact,  that  up  to  this  moment ,  he  has  not  evicted 
a  single  man  who  sent  his  children ;  and  that  those  who  openly 
refused  were  driven  away.  I  leave  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn  by 
yourself. 

Let  me  mention  another  fact  or  two.  Seven  tenants  of  the 
village  of  Drimcoggy,  already  named  by  me  to  the  public,  were 
informed  of  his  lordship’s  earnest  desire,  but  paid  no  heed  to  it, 
even  after  their  neighbors  had  succumbed.  They  were  threatened 
with  “notice  to  quit.”  In  vain.  The  notice  was  served.  The 
six  months  were  just  expiring.  The  poor  creatures  took  alarm  at 
last,  met  together  one  night,  discussed  the  question  of  sending  the 
children,  or  of  suffering  eviction.  They  decided  on  the  former 
course,  and  were  never  after  molested.  Others  who  at  the  same 
time  refused,  such  as  James  Costelloe  and  Patt  Staunton,  were 
driven  to  the  road. 

Again,  in  the  month  of  October,  1858,  the  agent,  minister,  and 
daughter,  summoned  a  number  of  tenants  together  at  the  school- 
house.  They  were  each  asked  separately  to  send  the  children. 
They  refused,  and  were  dismissed  with  a  threat  of  eviction.  Three 
days  later,  the  same  agent  and  lady  came  to  the  village  and  de¬ 
manded  the  children  “for  the  last  time”— no  answer,  no  promise  ; 
and  on  the  spot  the  lady  turned  to  the  agent  and  directed  him  to 
come  and  take  possession  of  the  land  next  day,  for  that  Lord 
Plunket  would  have  no  tenant  who  refused  his  children.  Next 
day  the  agent  came ,  demanded  the  land,  and  at  my  instance  was 
refused.  At  the  same  time,  he  declared  that  the  people  should 
send  their  children  to  the  school,  and  merited  eviction  for  their 
refusal. 

This  was  the  whole  of  my  “acting  as  landlord,”  a  part  I 
would  act,  I  confess,  again  to-morrow  under  the  same  circum¬ 
stances. 

In  his  letter  to  Lord  Cowley,  Bishop  Plunket  asserts  that  among 
all  the  people  evicted  there  was  only  one  child  of  an  age  to  attend  . 
school.  This  is  simply  false — absolutely  reckless.  The  fact  is, 
that  since  he  began  the  work  of  proselytism  up  to  the  evictions, 
they  had  each,  with  ope  solitary  exception,  from  one  child  to 
three  children  of  that  age,  but  by  ludicrous  shifts  managed  to 
escape  the  infliction  of  sending  them. 

Thus  Martin  Lally replied  to  the  demand,  the  “earnest  desire,” 
for  his  child,  that  he  was  only  three  years  old,  when  he  was 
seven. 

John  Boyle,  on  the  contrary,  made  his  daughter  out  too  old  for 
school,  and  got  a  grown  girl  to  personate  her. 

Michael  Henaghan  and  his  wife  ran  away  from  the  lady  and 
minister,  leaving  the  child  to  make  her  own  apology. 

Michael  Cavanagh  put  his  daughter  aside,  and  pointing  to  a 
cradle  in  which ‘'lay  his  little  grandchild,  replied,  “Take  the 
cradle  and  all.”  Yet,  Lord  Plunket  ventures  to  assert  that  people 


502 


APPENDIX. 


thus  “earnestly  desired,”  thus  answering  and  thus  acting,  had 
no  children  at  all ! 

Finally,  as  regards  the  reasons  for  which  Lord  Plunket 
“vouched,”  and  those  put  forward  by  his  agent,  they  were  all 
after -thoughts — the  fact  being,  that  notice  to  quit  and  process  of 
ejectment  were  served  before  the  greater  part  of  them  had  any 
origin  in  fact  whatsoever.  Thus,  the  first  notice  was  served  in  Feb¬ 
ruary,  1859,  the  “notice”  itself  in  April — all  the  allegations 
being  of  a  subsequent  date.  Boyle  lent  me  his  cai't  in  July,  1859  ; 
the  Scripture-readers,  after  attempting  to  tear  the  scapular  off 
Mrs.  Murray’s  breast,  were  assaulted  by  her  son  in  August,  1859. 
Harrison  was  murdered  in  February,  1860  (informations  being 
sworn  against  the  bishop’s  own  servant).  Thus,  we  see  the  value 
of  the  different  pretences  put  forward,  contradictory  as  they  are, 
as  a  justification  for  the  “hideous  scandal  !” 

As  regards  the  letter  of  Lord  Plunket  to  Lord  Cowley,  is  it  not 
remarkable  that  its  very  second  sentence  is  a  misstatement  ?  He 
says  that,  “  according  to  the  terms  of  this  advertisement,”  the 
Bishop  of  Orleans  was  “to  accuse”  him  (Lord  Plunket),  etc.  How, 
the  fact  is  that  the  name  of  Plunket  never  appeared  at  all  in  the 
advertisement,  which  merely  stated  that  the  sermon  was  to  be 
“  pour  les  pauvres  Irlandais .”  These  are  the  very  terms  in 
which  Lord  Plunket’s  conscience  read  an  accusation  against 
himself. 

Like  Mr.  Adair,  Lord  Plunket  has  demanded,  and  obtained ,  a 
large  additional  force  of  police,  three  additional  barracks,  in  his 
property ;  and  so  far  from  being  required  to  pay  for  them,  he  is 
actually  a  gainer ;  for  he  is  paid  rent  for  the  houses,  one  being  a 
house  of  his  sister’s — one  his  “mission  school,”  or  teacher’s  house — 
and,  what  a  sad  lot !— a  third,  his  own  lodge  of  Tourmakeady. 
But  worse  even,  the  additional  police  tax,  which  he  should  be 
made  pay,  as  well  as  Mr.  Adair,  is  levied  almost  exclusively  on 
the  unfortunate  people,  his  own  lands  being — I  don’t  know  on 
what  principle  of  law — exempted  by  the  Mayo  grand  jury.  In 
fact,  there  is  a  cordon  of  four  barracks  within  about  a  mile  of 
Tourmakeady,  and  what  to  do,  if  not  to  oppress  the  people,  no 
one  knows,  for  the  “bishop”  himself  lias  not  shown  his  face 
there  these  two  years  past — a  melancholy  reflection,  that  a  digni¬ 
tary  of  any  Christian  Church  should  apprehend  personal  violence, 
the  result  of  cruel  and  heartless  conduct ;  that  he  should  proceed 
to  that  conduct  guarded  by  a  posse  of  mounted  police  !  May  I 
not  ask  again,  sir,  how  long  is  he  to  remain  a  magistrate  and  a 
mitred  prelate  ? 

As  to  your  statement  of  “wholesale  evictions  being  happily 
extremely  rare,  ”  witness,  in  reply,  Partry,  Glenveagh,  Erris,  all  in 
twelve  months  or  so.  They  are  indeed  rare  in  comparison,  for 
the  work  of  extermination  was  well  done  at  once ;  but  are  they 
not  still  of  too  frequent  occurrence  ? 

As  you  have  not  hesitated  to  give  public  expression  to  your 


APPENDIX. 


503 


% 


own  sentiments  on  the  subject,  may  we  not  expect  at  your  hands 
some  measure  curbing  the  power  of  such  men  as  the  Adairs, 
Palmers,  and  Plunkets  ?  It  is  idle  to  utter  barren  expressions  of 
“  commiseration  ”  while  the  root  of  the  evil  remains  untouched. 
Partry,  Erris,  Glenveagh,  may  be  repeated  to-morrow  in  every 
district  in  Ireland,  according  to  law.  Be  logical,  then,  sir,  as  you 
are  compassionate,  and  preyent  for  the  future  what  your  heart 
bleeds  to  behold. 

I  remain,  sir. 

Your  obedient  servant, 

Patrick  Layelle. 


/• 


APPENDIX. 


>C-i 


THE  WAR  IN  PARTRY. 


— o  -* 


i 


TO 


THE  IRISH  PEOPLE. 


Mount  Partry,  Mayo, 

Octave  of  the  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception ,  I860. 


Friends  of  Religious  Freedom, 

A  brief,  plain,  and  unvarnished  statement  of  facts  relative  to 
the  case  of  Lord  Plunket  and  his  Partry  tenants  is,  I  think,  most 
desirable  at  this  moment,  when  seventy  human  beings  are  made 
outcasts  by  him  in  the  land  of  their  birth.  This  I  am  now  going 
to  offer ;  the  facts  which  I  relate  being,  for  the  most  part,  sworn 
and  uncontradicted  evidence  before  a  judge  of  assize  in  this 
county,  or  else  such  as  fall  under  each  man’s  senses,  and  may 
therefore  be  tested  at  any  moment. 

The  wholesale  eviction  of  so  many  creatures  would,  under  any 
circumstances,  be  something  to  move  the  pity  of  any  man  not  bereft 
of  the  instincts  of  humanity ;  but  the  causes  which  led  to  the 
Partry  evictions,  and  the  agencies  which  brought  them  about, 
aggravate  their  atrocity  a  hundredfold.  The  causes  were,  land¬ 
lord  proselytism ;  the  agencies,  the  landlord’s  (a  bishop’s)  daughters, 
his  missionary  minister,  Scripture-readers,  agents,  bailiffs,  “notice 
to  quit,”  and  “process  of  ejectment.”  Since  the  moment  the 
bishop  became  landlord,  he  let  loose  all  these  instruments  among 
his  tenants,  and,  as  you  shall  see  in  due  course,  not  without  tem¬ 
porary  success.  The  majority  yielded  to  the  terrible  pressure; 
and  ivere  left  unmolested;  others  resisted,  and  were  turned  out; 
others,  in  fine,  were  putting  off  the  evil  hour  from  day  to  day, 
until  at  length  the  crisis  came  on  my  appointment,  and  no  alterna¬ 
tive  was  left  them  hut  submission  or  eviction.  For  proof  of  all  this 
I  refer  at  once  to  the  subjoined  evidence,  and  beforehand  I  venture 
to  say  that  no  statements  were  ever  more  authentically  sustained, 
than  my  propositions  in  this  pamphlet,  viz.,  “  that  Bishop  Plun¬ 
ket  has  unscrupulously  wielded  his  powers  as  landlord  to  prose- 


APPENDIX. 


505 


lytize  the  children  of  his  Catholic  tenantry — that  he  has  actually 
evicted  tenants  for  refusing  to  send  their  children  to  schools  under 
the  ‘  Irish  Church  Mission,’  which  his  minister  swore  were  intended 
to  ‘  bring  the  children  up  Protestants  ’ — and  that  they  who  yielded 
only  did  so  under  threat  of  a  similar  fate.” 

I  ask  no  man  to  take  a  single  statement  on  my  own  word.  I 
give  in  proof,  1st,  sworn  and  uncontroverted  evidence;  2nd,  facts 
patent  to  the  senses  of  any  one  who  may  “come  and  see and  3rd, 
facts  with  names ,  and  places ,  and  dates,  and  to  which  I  challenge 
contradiction. 

Thirty  years  ago,  then,  Lord  Plunket  (then  Bev.  Mr.  Plunket) 
came  first  to  Partry  as  a  tenant  of  three  or  four  acres  of  land  in 
Tourmakeady,  under  his  brother-in-law*,  Sir  Francis  Blosse.  On 
these  he  built  a  shooting  lodge.  By  degrees  tenant  after  tenant 
was  obliged  to  retire  before  him,  until  he  became  the  occupant  of 
all  the  two  Tourmakeadies,  heretofore  occupied  by  some  sixteen 
prosperous  families.  Subsequently,  he  purchased,  in  the  Incum¬ 
bered  Estates  Court,  the  property  of  which  his  farm  of  the  Tour¬ 
makeadies  formed  part,  and  latei',  an  adjoining  property  of  Mr. 
Moore’s,  of  Moore  Hall.  The  famine  came,  and  with  it,  as  all 
know,  came  the  spirit  of  proselytism,  and  the  onslaught  on  the 
people’s  faith.  Lord  Plunket  built  two  schools,  and  placed  them, 
at  once,  under  the  Irish  Church  Mission.  There  was  a  national 
school  in  another  portion  of  the  property  purchased  by  his  sister. 
Charges  of  proselytism  were  made  against  Miss  Plunket— an  in¬ 
vestigation  long  and  laborious  was  held— and  the  school  ceased  to 
be  under  the  National  Board.  Miss  Plunket  purchased  the  lease 
of  it,  and  forthwith  placed  it  under  the  auspices  of  the  same  “  Irish 
Church  Mission  Society  to  Pi,oman  Catholics.”  In  these  schools 
there  were  five  teachers — three  male  and  two  female.  We  may 
therefore  set  them  dovm  as  five  distinct  schools — twro  in  Cappa- 
duff,  two  in  Drimcoggy,  and  one  in  Newtown.  The  latter,  from 
the  outset,  was  a  perfect  failure,  as  the  bishop  had  not  purchased 
that  portion  of  the  property  on  which  it  was  built — so  much  a 
failure,  indeed,  that  on  my  appointment  to  Partry,  in  October, 
1858,  I  found  only  one  Catholic  child  in  attendance  there,  and  for 
this  attendance,  so  far  from  paying,  he  received  a  fee  of  two 
shillings  and  six  pence  a  month.  His  name  is  Manion,  the  child  of 
miserably  poor  parents,  who  are  still  in  the  place.  Shortly  after 
my  appointment  he  ceased  his  attendance. 

But  the  schools  in  Lord  Plunket’s  own  property  and  that  of  his 
sister,  Catherine  Plunket,  were  no  failures.  In  due  course  they 
were  cramful  of  Catholic  children  ;  and  now  let  us  see  the  means 
adopted  to  accomplish  this  end.  As  I  have  said,  the  bailiff,  the 
agent,  the  minister,  the  Scripture-reader,  the  bishop’s  daughters,  and 
the  “  notice  to  quit,”  were  let  loose  on  the  trembling  tenant,  and 
who  could  doubt  the  result  ?  In  proof  of  this,  let  me  now,  at  once, 
insert  the  evidence  of  the  bishop’s  and  his  sister’s  own  tenants, 
and  those  evicted  by  them,  as  recorded  at  the  late  Galway  trial— 
“  Lavelle  v.  Bole  ’’—and  given  in  presence  of  the  bishop,  his 


506 


APPENDIX. 


daughters,  his  minister,  agents,  bailiffs,  and  the  whole  staff  of  pro- 
selytizers,  when  not  even  one  of  them  dared  to  contradict  a  single 
statement  deposed.  I  pray  special  attention  to  all  this  evidence.* 

1.  Michael  Walsh  (an  evicted  tenant )  examined  by  Mr.  Blake, 
Q.C. — I  lived  on  the  lands  of  Gortfree  from  my  infancy,  as  did 
my  father  and  grandfather  ;  I  left  about  four  years  ago  and  went 
to  the  lands  of  Ballybannon  ;  my  landlord  in  Gortfree  was  Mr. 
Moore,  of  Moore  Hall ;  he  is  not  the  owuer  of  the  lands  now  ; 
Lord  Plunket  is  the  landlord,  and  he  came  into  possession  about 
the  time  I  left ;  I  had  a  crop  on  the  farm  when  I  left  it ;  I  then 
wrent  to  live  on  another  holding  Lord  Plunket  gave  me ;  I  am  not 
living  there  now ;  I  left  it  about  two  years  ago  ;  it  was  Lord 
Plunket’ s  land ;  possession  was  demanded  from  me  several  times 
by  a  bailiff,  Robert  Holmes,  and  by  Mr.  Faulkner ;  we  were  left 
in  for  twelve  months  after  possession  was  first  demanded,  for  my 
father  was  dying,  and  Lord  Plunket  wTould  not  turn  us  out  until 
he  died  ;  I  have  two  children ;  I  have  not  sent  either  of  them  to 
those  schools. 

Mr.  Blake,  Q.C. — As  a  matter  of  fact,  did  any  person  go  to  you 
with  respect  to  sending  them  to  those  schools  ?  A  Scripture-reader 
came  and  asked  me  to  carry  my  child  to  school,  and  that  I  would 
not  be  turned  out ;  I  refused,  and  was  evicted. 

2.  John  Prendergast  (one  who  had  yielded),  an  Irish  witness, 
was  examined  by  Mr.  Morris,  through  an  interpreter — I  live  in 
the  mountains  of  Partry ;  I  know  the  Rev.  Mr.  Townsend ;  I 
have  a  kind  of  knowledge  of  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket ;  I  am  a 
tenant  of  his  lordship  ;  I  am  a  Catholic,  and  go  to  Mass,  and  that 
is  the  way  I  intend  to  bring  up  my  children  ;  the  minister  and 
Miss  Plunket  paid  me  a  visit  one  day ;  I  saw  them  coming,  and  I 
put  a  basket  over  a  box  and  stood  behind  it  to  screen  myself ;  the 
minister  came  in  and  found  me  out ;  he  told  me  the  lady,  Miss 
Plunket,  was  waiting  at  the  door  for  me ;  she  asked  me  would  I 
send  my  children  to  school ;  I  said  I  would  not ;  that  was  about 
a  year  ago ;  as  far  as  my  recollection  goes,  I  think  it  was  before 
May-day ;  I  got  a  notice  to  put  me  out  of  the  farm  ;  I  sent  my 
children  to  the  school ;  I  was  afraid,  for  I  had  a  long,  -weak 
family;  I  took  them  from  the  school ;  after  that,  a  bit  I  eat  didn’t 
do  me  good,  and  I  knew  I  had  been  acting  contrary  to  my  con¬ 
science  and  to  God. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Robinson,  Q.C. — I  never  took  a  stone 
off  Miss  Plunket’s  house ;  I  was  not  there,  but  my  horse  and  cart 
was,  and  my  son  wTas  with  it. 


*  This  evidence  was  given  in  an  action  for  libel  taken  by  Father  Lavelle  against 
Mr.  Bole,  editor  of  the  Mayo  Constitution.  The  case  arose  out  of  the  Partry 
proselytisra.  Mr.  Bole  justified  his  libels  on  Mr.  Lavelle  by  alleging  that  Mr. 
Lavelle  libelled  Lord  Plunket  and  his  family;  and  Mr.  Lavelle,  in  reply,  pro¬ 
duced  the  sixty-seven  witnesses  to  prove  that  he  did  not  libel  Lord  Plunket.  but 
that  all  he  had'  ever  written  about  his  proselytism  was  TRUE,  as  the  evidence 
eventually  proved.  The  case  occupied  six  days,  and  created  the  greatest  excite¬ 
ment.  The  jury,  being  a  mixed  one,  disagreed. 


APPENDIX. 


507 


Did  the  agent,  Mr.  Faulkner,  tell  you  that  the  reason  you 
ceased  to  he  a  tenant  on  the  property  was,  that  you  were  concerned 
in  removing  those  stones  ? 

Mr.  Morris  objected  to  the  question. 

Court — Had  you  any  conversation  with  the  agent  about  this  ? 
I  have  no  recollection  about  it  more  than  that  one  day  I  went  to 
the  office,  and  he  refused  to  take  my  rent  from  me.  He  never 
spoke  about  the  stones. 

By  Mr.  Robinson,  Q.C. — I  can’t  say  whether  that  was  before 
the  ejectment  or  not ;  I  signed  a  paper  at  the  Castlebar  assizes  ; 
I  believe  it  was  after  that  the  rent  was  refused  from  myself  and 
the  other  tenants ;  I  am  a  tenant  yet, 'as  well  as  the  rest  of  them  ; 
all  that  stood  as  good  tenants,  and  didn’t  die,  are  there  still. 
( They  are  not  there  now,  alas  !) 

By  Mr.  Morris — I  was  served  with  a  paper,  which  I  gave  to  Mr. 
Blake  ;  it  was  a  notice  to  quit. 

3.  Sarah  Prendergast  examined  by  Mr.  Blake,  Q.C. — I  am  the 
wife  of  the  last  witness  ;  I  know  the  Rev.  Mr.  Townsend  and  the 
Hon.  Miss  Plunket ;  Mr.  Townsend  often  visited  me  ;  I  know  the 
three  schools  that  are  in  Partry ;  I  have  eight  children ;  Mr. 
Townsend  desired  me  to  send  them  to  the  schools ;  I  could  not 
keep  an  account  of  it,  he  came  so  frequently ;  Miss  Plunket  also 
came  to  me  about  it ;  it  is  two  years  ago  ;  I  do  not  recollect  how 
often  she  came ;  I  sent  the  children  to  school,  and  took  them 
away  again ;  after  doing  so  Miss  Plunket  and  Mr.  Townsend  came 
to  me  again  ;  Mr.  Townsend  said  they  would  put  us  off  the  land 
if  I  did  not  send  the  children  to  school. 

Not  cross-examined. 

4.  Betty  Kavanagh  (one  who  had  yielded)  examined  by  Mr. 
Burke,  Q.C. — I  am  the  wife  of  Patt  Kavanagh,  who  is  a  tenant  to 
Lord  Plunket ;  I  know  the  Rev.  Mr.  Townsend ;  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  know  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket,  for  when  the  lady  used 
to  come  to  my  house  I  used  to  go  and  hide  from  her ;  Mr.  Townsend 
and  one  of  the  bishop’s  daughters  came  one  day,  and  wanted  the 
children  from  me  to  send  them  to  the  school ;  the  lady  also  asked 
for  them  ;  it  was  Mr.  Townsend  told  me  what  she  said,  for  he 
speaks  Irish ;  I  said  the  children  were  not  in ;  she  asked  me  to 
send  one  of  them  who  was  within  until  evening ;  I  said  she  was 
ill ;  the  lady  took  up  the  child  and  told  her  to  put  out  her  tongue 
to  see  wiiether  she  was  sick  (laughter)  ;  the  child  put  out  her 
tongue,  and  the  lady  having  looked  at  it,  said  it  was  worms  was 
the  matter  with  her  ;  she  then  asked  that  the  child  should  be  sent 
to  her  the  following  day. 

To  Mr.  Buchanan — My  husband  is  here  ;  wre  have  a  reasonable 
holding  now  ;  it  belongs  to  Lord  Plunket. 

5.  Catherine  Moran  (one  who  yielded)  examined  by  Mr.  Blake, 
Q.C. — I  live  at  Cahereen  ;  Lord  Plunket  is  my  landlord  ;  I  know 
Miss  Plunket  and  Mr.  Townsend  ;  I  recollect  their  coming  to  my 
house,  about  two  years  ago,  several  times  ;  one  day  they  came  up, 
and,  the  door  being  closed,  Mr.  Townsend  knocked ;  it  was  not 


508 


APPENDIX. 


opened,  and  he  shook  it  open,  went  in,  and  asked  why  they  had  not 
opened  for  them  ;  he  then  asked  why  I  had  not  sent  my  children 
to  the  school,  and  said  I  would  be  sorry  for  not  doing  it ;  I  said  I 
would  send  them  when  the  other  tenants  sent  their  children  ;  I 
did  send  one  of  my  children  there  for  about  six  weeks  through 
fear. 

6.  Catherine  Henaghan  (one  who  had  yielded) — I  am  a  tenant 
of  Lord  Plunket’s  ;  often  saw  the  minister  and  Miss  Plunket 
coming  to  the  village  for  children  ;  used  always  to  run  away  and 
hide  ;  I  saw  him  one  day  coming  to  the  door  after  I  ran  away,  and 
knocking  twice,  and  when  it  was  not  opened  he  put  his  two  hands 
to  it  and  forced  it  in  ;  Miss  Plunket  was  outside,  leaning  against 
the  wall ;  then  I  saw  him  through  the  window  putting  his  stick 
under  the  bed. — (Objected  to.) 

7.  Honor  Kerrigan  (one  who  had  yielded) — I  am  a  tenant  of 
Lord  Plunket’s,  and  a  Catholic  ;  the  minister  and  Miss  Plunket 
came  one  day  into  my  house,  and  asked  me  to  send  my  child  back 
to  school ;  I  had  withdrawn  it  with  all  the  rest  before,  and  would 
never  have  sent  it  only  through  fear  ;  I  refused  them,  and  said  I 
would  rather  take  a  bag  and  beg  than  do  it ;  the  minister  then  said 
I  would  have  leave  to  beg,  for  that  no  one  would  be  in  the  land 
that  did  not  send  the  children ;  he  said  this  after  he  spoke  to  the 
lady ;  I  believe  he  told  me  in  Irish  what  she  said  in  English. 

8.  Bridget  Prendergast  (one  who  had  yielded) — I  am  a  tenant 
of  Lord  Plunket’s  ;  I  sent  my  little  boy  to  the  school  through  fear 
of  being  turned  out  ;  the  minister  and  lady  came  twice  before  I 
sent  it ;  I  hid  first,  and  used  to  tell  the  little  boy  to  hide  ;  the 
last  time  they  came,  Mr.  Townsend  said  that  if  I  did  not  send  the 
little  bo}''  to  school  I  would  be  turned  away,  and  people  put  in  my 
place  that  would  send  their  children  ;  it  was  after  we  got  ‘  ‘  notice  ” 
I  sent  the  little  boy  to  school. 

By  Mr.  Whiteside,  Q.C. — My  husband  is  at  home,  and  we  are 
all  well ;  I  paid  the  last  November  rent. 

9.  Several  other  witnesses,  tenants  on  different  townlancls,  were 
examined,  and  proved  other  instances  of  the  same  character,  of  the 
visits  of  Mr.  Townsend  and  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket  to  them,  re¬ 
garding  the  children,  the  schools,  the  services  of  notices  to  quit, 
and  threats  if  they  failed  to  do  what  they  were  told.  One  of  the 
women  stated  that  her  husband  was  not  examined,  because  the 
men  used  to  be  at  work  when  the  visitors  came  to  the  house.  On 
cross-examination,  she  said  a  great  number  of  them  had  gone  to 
town  together,  and  Father  Lavelle  told  them  to  do  what  was  right, 
and  no  more  ;  that  was  all  he  said. 

10.  Mrs.  Gibbons  (who  had  evaded),  a  very  respectable  looking 
woman,  deposed  that  her  husband  is  dead,  and  she  holds  his  land; 
Mr.  Townsend  and  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket  came  to  her  house 
several  times,  but  she  always  went  out  and  took  her  children 
along  with  her,  for  she  did  nob  want  to  let  them  go  to'the  school ; 
one  day  the  reverend  gentleman  and  the  lady  came  and  told  her  if 
she  did  not  send  her  children  to  the  schools  they  would  get  other 


APPENDIX. 


509 


tenants  who  would  do  so  ;  she  said  she  would  not  send  her  chil¬ 
dren  there  ;  next  morning  the  agent,  Mr.  Faulkner,  came  to  de¬ 
mand  possession. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Buchanan— When  the  agent  came  he 
first  wanted  her  children  for  the  school,  and  then  said  something 
about  their  wanting  to  get  the  village  striped  ;  I  did  not  tell  Mr. 
Lavelle  about  the  matter,  for  he  was  present  that  morning,  and  he 
advised  me  not  to  give  up  possession ;  I  hold  the  land  still. 

Mr.  Whiteside,  Q.  C _ And  you  will  for  a  long  time,  after  that 

candid  admission.  Go  home,  ma’am. 

Mr.  Morris — It  might  shorten  the  cross-examination  when  we 
admit  that  Mr.  Lavelle  advised  them  all  not  to  give  up  posses¬ 
sion,  and  so  would  I. 

11.  Patrick  Coyne — I  used  to  work  for  Lord  Plunket.  After 
we  had  all  taken  the  children  from  school,  myself,  and  Pat  Kelly, 
and  John  Coyne,  were  sent  for  by  the  steward,  and  told  to  cast 
lots  which  of  us  would  go  through  the  village  and  gather  the  chil¬ 
dren,  and  bring  them  to  the  bridge,  for  Mr.  Townsend  and  Miss 
Plunket  to  bring  them  to  school.  We  refused,  and  were  turned 
out  of  employment,  and  told  to  go  home.  I  got  no  employment 
since. 

12.  John  Coyne  gave  evidence  to  the  same  effect  as  Pat  Coyne, 
regarding  the  dismissal  of  himself  and  other  workmen  in  the  em¬ 
ployment  of  Lord  Plunket,  because  they  would  not  send  their  chil¬ 
dren  to  the  Protestant  school ;  that  was  about  Christmas,  1858  ;  he 
previously  got  a  stripe  of  land  from  his  lordship,  which  he  holds 
yet ;  he  paid  the  last  November  rent. 

13.  Sarah  Walsh  was  produced  and  examined  by  Mr.  Blake, 
Q.C.,  to  prove  evictions  on  the  Hon.  Miss  Plunket’s  lands. 

Mr.  Sergeant  Fitzgibbon  objected  to  the  evidence,  but  it  was 
received  subject  to  the  objection. 

Examination  continued — Lived  on  Miss  Plunket’s  property  six¬ 
teen  years ;  about  four  years  ago  the  land  was  taken  from  her, 
but  she  kept  the  house  until  two  years  ago ;  Miss  Plunket  came 
to  her  three  times  about  sending  her  children  to  the  school ;  on 
the  May  following  her  refusal  to  do  so,  she  put  her  out  of  the 
land  ;  Miss  Plunket  asked  her  what  objection  she  had  to  seud  her 
children  to  the  school  like  every  other  person,  and  she  said  she 
would  take  the  land  from  her  if  she  did  not  send  her  child  there  ; 
met  the  lady  frequently  in  addition  to  the  three  times  she  came  to 
the  house  ;  after  taking  away  the  land,  she  told  her  that  she 
would  let  her  in  again,  build  up  her  house  newly,  make  a  yard 
and  other  improvements  for  her,  if  she  sent  her  child  to  the  school; 
did  not  do  so  ;  Miss  Plunket  told  her  that  the  teaching  of  the 
priests  and  the  monks  was  that  of  the  devil. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Robinson — Her  child  went  to  the 
national  school,  but  she  could  not  say  how  long ;  what  Miss  Plunket 
did  was  to  take  possession,  stripe  the  land,  and  give  her  share  to 
another  person,  who  sent  the  children  to  the  school ;  sold  drink  in 
her  house  for  six  years  ;  there  was  no  bad  conduct  carried  on 


510 


APPENDIX. 


there ;  did  not  hear  that  complaints  were  made  of  it ;  she  was 
never  told  that  the  reason  she  was  deprived  of  her  land  and  house 
was  on  account  of  the  improper  characters  she  had  assembled  tliere; 
she  would  be  let  in  again  if  she  sent  her  child  to  the  school ;  the 
house  was  burned  since,  but  she  had  no  notion  who  did  it. 

14.  Mrs.  Sally  Quinn  deposed  that  she  had  the  pleasure  of 
Miss  Plunket’s  acquaintance  for  the  last  thirty-three  years. 
(Laughter. ) 

Mr.  Morris — Oh!  never  go  beyond  twenty-five ;  that  is  the  limit, 
you  knowT.  (Laughter). 

Examination  continued— She  was  a  tenant  on  her  lands;  her 
children  attended  the  school,  which  was  then  a  national  school, 
until  the  teacher  became  a  “convert,”  and  then  she  took  them 
away  ;  Miss  Plunket  told  her  afterwards  that  a  great  many  of  the 
other  tenants  were  following  her  example  in  not  sending  the  chil¬ 
dren  to  the  Scripture  lessons  that  were  given  in  the  school ;  she 
replied  that  she  never  would  send  them  there,  and  she  was  turned 
out  of  the  land  soon  after ;  that  was  in  1853  ;  has  been  at  Moore 
Hall  for  the  last  four  years. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Buchanan — Is  not  a  turbulent  person  ; 
the  house  she  lived  in  was  the  same,  she  was  informed,  that  was 
afterwards  taken  down,  and  the  stones  of  which  were  carried  to 
the  monastery. 

Mr.  Morris — Oh  !  don’t  mind  about  that  now  ;  probably  there 
wras  a  presentment  for  compensation  for  it,  like  for  the  monastery 
schools. 

15.  James  Costelloe  deposed  that  he  had  been  a  tenant  of  Lord 
Plunket’s,  and  was  turned  out  of  possession  in  November,  1857, 
after  he  refused  to  send  his  children  to  the  school,  when  requested 
to  do  so  by  the  land-agent  and  Scripture-readers;  he  was  promised 
compensation  for  his  land,  but  only  got  £2  out  of  the  £7,  which 
was  the  valuation  put  on  it  by  the  valuator  to  whom  it  was 
referred. 

Ci’oss-examined  by  Mr.  "Robinson,  Q.C.  —  There  was  a  clod  of 
turf  flung  at  the  Rev.  Mr.  Townsend  in  the  Main-street  of  Ballin- 
robe,  when  there  was  a  great  deal  of  shouting  amongst  the  crowd ; 
witness  was  accused  for  flinging  the  clod  ;  Mr.  Townsend  came  to 
him,  and  said  if  he  would  plead  guilty  to  the  charge  he  would 
intercede  for  him  ;  witness  therefore  pleaded  guilty,  and  was  let 
out ;  on  his  oath  he  had  not  handled  the  clod  of  turf  that  day. 

16.  Pat  Staunton — I  was  a  tenant  of  Lord  Plunket’s;  I  was 
evicted  because  I  refused  to  send  my  children  to  school ;  Holmes, 
the  bailiff,  told  me  if  I  would  not  send  them  I  would  be  evicted  ; 
I  answered  I  would  not,  that  I  would  never  pay  Lord  Plunket 
two  rents — my  money  and  my  conscience  ;  I  was  noticed  to  quit, 
and  possession  demanded  of  me ;  I  was  promised  as  much  as  it 
would  cost  to  put  me  out  by  law,  but  never  got  a  farthing  ;  I  am 
now  under  a  good  man,  Sir  Robert  Blosse. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Buchanan— Was  never  spoken  to  by 
any  of  Lord  Plunket’s  people  for  abusing  the  scholars  as  they  were 


APPENDIX. 


511 


going  to  the  school ;  I  was  not  told,  if  I  did  not  behave  myselr, 
and  let  the  children  alone,  I  would  be  put  out  of  the  land. 

Patrick  Kavanagh  stated  that  he  was. a  tenant  of  Lord  Pluu- 
ket’s ;  that  three  years  ago  Holmes,  the  bailiff,  came  and  told  him 
if  he  did  not  send  his  children  to  the  school  he  would  be  put  out ; 
as  he  was  afraid  of  being  ejected,  he  sent  his  little  girl ;  the 
others  would  not  go  ;  she  remained  at  the  school  only  a  short 
time,  as  her  two  brothers  dragged  her  out  of  it ;  when  she  came 
home  every  evening  they  used  to  abuse  her  and  call  her 
“jumper.” 

Mr.  Morris — A  nice  feeling  to  cause  between  brothers  and 
sisters. 

Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Robinson,  Q.C. — He  held  the  land 
before  Lord  Plunket  came  into  possession  ;  his  part  was  striped  to 
him  ;  he  holds  it  yet ;  no  ejectment  was  brought  against  him. 

Patrick  Concannon  and  other  witnesses  gave  evidence  to  the 
same  effect. 

18.  Patrick  Henehan  deposed  that  he  was  one  of  those  who 
were  ejected  at  the  last  Castlebar  assizes ;  he  holds  the  land 
under  Lord  Plunket  still,  but  they  would  not  take  any  rent  from 
him  since  November  last ;  witness  was  brought  to  the  sclioolhouse 
before  Miss  Plunket,  Mr.  Plunket,  Mr.  Townsend,  and  another 
master,  and  was  “tried”  there  by  each  of  them  (laughter)  ;  Miss 
Plunket  asked  him  how  many  children  he  had,  and  he  said  six ; 
she  told  him  to  send  them  to  the  school,  and  said  that  no  person 
would  be  on  the  estate  who  would  not  give  an  education  to  their 
children,  and  send  them  to  the-  school,  and  that  she  had  been 
asking  for  the  children  for  fourteen  months ;  told  her  he  would 
not  go  against  his  conscience  and  his  creed ;  did  not  send  them  to 
the  school,  thank  God  (tears  in  his  eyes). 

Mr.  Bourke—  My  lord,  we  have  in  all  sixty-seven  of  those 
witnesses. 

Court— I  suppose  it  is  the  same  evidence  all  are  to  give  ? 

Mr.  Bourke^— Yes,  your  lordship. 

Court — Oh !  then  I  really  think  we  have  enough. 

Mr.  Bourke — Very  well,  my  lord.  Then  we  will  examine  the 
reverend  plaintiff. 

Here,  then,  have  we  in  sworn,  solemn  attestation  by  eighteen 
witnesses,  uncontradicted  in  a  single  instance,  the  means 
employed  by  Lord  Plunket  to  proselytize  the  children  of  liis 
tenantry.  We  see  that  incessant  visits  from  the  ladies  and 
minister,  etc.,  etc. — threats  of  eviction — service  of  “notice  to 
quit  ” — breaking  open  doors — hygienic  examinations  of  the  tongues, 
of  children  alleged  to  be  ill — poking  under  beds — were  the  means 
employed  bjr  these  emissaries  of  the  bishop  ; — while,  alas  for 
honor  !  lying  excuses — running  out  of  their  houses— hiding  them¬ 
selves  and  their  children — were  the  shifts  adopted  by  the  un 
fortunate  tenants  to  evade  what  to  them  was  next  to  death,  the 
sacrifice  of  their  children’s  faith.  These  were  only  eighteen  out  of 
sixty-seven  witnesses  who  were  present  under  subpoena  to  testify 


512 


APPENDIX. 


to  similar  proceedings  in  regard  to  themselves.  But  as  their 
examination  would  prolong  the  trial  indefinitely  (a  trial  which 
occupied  six  days),  and  as  their  evidence  would  be  only  a  repeti¬ 
tion,  in  their  own  regard,  of  that  already  given,  the  court  thought 
it  might  be  dispensed  with  by  my  consenting.  Now  the  bishop 
was  a  listener  to  every  single  word.  His  very  presence,  as  he  sat 
beside  the  judge  gazing  down  on  his  unfortunate  victims  or  depend¬ 
ants,  while  they  calmly  and  conscientiously  gave  their  evidence, 
might  be  enough  to  terrify  them  into  silence  or  worse.  But  uo. 
With  the  fear  of  God  before  their  eyes — in  the  very  presence  of 
their  landlord  and  his  several  agents — they  deposed  to  those 
harrowing  details  ;  and  though  challenged  again  to  explain  his 
conduct,  the  bishop  never  opened  his  lips.  Himself,  his  daughters, 
sister,  minister,  agent,  were  summoned,  expressly  subpoenaed ,  that 
they  might  be  there  to  deny,  if  they  dared,  the  facts  sworn  to 
against  them.  They  did  not — for  they  could  not ;  and  thus  judg¬ 
ment  went  by  default. 

There  are  other  facts  which  have  not  appeared  in  evidence,  but 
which  I  give,  with  the  names  of  the  parties. 

1.  The  minister  and  the  “daughters”  came  one  day  into  the 
house  of  Mr.  William  Cavanagh  in  search  of  children.  Mrs. 
Cavanagh  saw  them  approach,  and  at  once  seized  a  child  of  hers 
that  happened  to  be  within,  and  hid  it  between  the  feather  bed  and 
the  mat.  There  the  poor  child  remained  during  a  long  colloquy 
between  the  mother  and  the  missionaries.  When  they  at  length 
left,  the  mother  ran  to  the  bed,  extricated  the  child,  and  found  it 
livid  in  the  face,  and  nearly  suffocated  ;  yet  the  poor  innocent, 
from  an  instinctive  horror  of  the  schools,  would  not  utter  a  cry. 

2.  The  same  woman  kept  her  children  twelve  months  almost  in 
a  state  of  nudity,  that,  if  caught  within  or  about  the  house,  they 
would  not  be  forced  to  school.  The  effect  of  this  was  that  their 
skin  became  parched  up,  withered,  and  scaly-like.  This  will  yet 
be  proved  in  evidence  ;  and,  in  the  meantime,  any  one  who  ques¬ 
tions  the  fact  has  only  to  come  to  Partly,  call  on  William  Cava- 
nagh’s  wife,  and  test  himself  the  truth. 

3.  All  the  mothers  of  young  children  in  Cappaduff,  Miss  Plun- 
ket’s  propertjq  were  obliged  themselves  to  assemble,  together 
with  the  children,  at  an  appointed  rendezvous,  and  thence  to 
conduct  them  to  school.  Two  of  those  had  to  carry  their  children 
on  their  backs,  they  being  too  young  to  walk. 

4.  I  myself  saw  Dean  Plunket,  on  the  4th  January,  1859,  with 
two  bailiffs,  going  to  the  house  of  Patt  Walsh  (Roe),  take  out  his 
daughter,  raise  her  over  the  fence  of  Lord  Plunket’s  plantation, 
and  thus  conduct  her  by  a  back  way  to  the  proselytizing  school. 
I  swore  this  in  presence  of  Dean  Plunket,  and  of  course  he  dared 
not  contradict  me. 

5.  A  Scripture-reader  of  the  name  of  Donnelly  pursued  me, 
one  day,  after  my  appointment,  into  the  house  of  Patt  Kavanagh, 
acknowledged  that  he  did  so  to  prevent  the  parents  promising  to 
withdraw  their  children,  and  there,  in  presence  of  several,  called 


513 


APPENDIX. 

me  a  devil.  This  favorite  appellation  he  bestowed  on  me  a 
month  afterwards  in  the  house  of  Michael  Whelan,  in  my  own 
*  presence,  and  a  third  time  in  the  house  of  Mrs.  Murray. 

This  leads  us  to  glance  at  the  character  of  some  of  the  agents 
employed. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Townsend,  superintendent  of  the  proselytizing 
schools,  thus  deposes  at  the  same  trial :  “Mr.  Lavelle  asked  me 
was  he  Antichrist,  and  I  replied,  ‘  No,  but  I  believe  you  to  be  a 
minister  of  Antichrist.’  I  still  believe  him  to  be  a  minister  of 
Antichrist. 

“  Mr.  Morris— Do  you  swear,  sir,  before  the  court  and  country 
that  this  reverend  gentleman  (pointing  to  Mr.  Lavelle)  is  a  minis¬ 
ter  of  Antichrist  ?  I  do,  on  the  principle  that - 

“Mr.  Morris— Oh  !  none  of  your  principles.  You  persist  in 
swearing  before  a  Christian  and  Catholic  world  that  a  Catholic 
priest  is  the  minister  of  Antichrist  ?  I  do ;  for  the  Lord  hath 
said,  ‘  He  who  is  not  with  me  is  against  me.  ’  I asked  Mr.  Lavelle 
ivas  he  married.  I  knew  he  was  a  priest  and  unmarried.  I  was 
giving  proofs  of  the  apostacy,  and  quoting  from  St.  Paul,  fourth 
chapter,  when  he  says — [interrupted].  The  object  of  the  Church 
Mission  Society  and  schools  is  to  bring  up  children  Protestants. 

“Mr.  Morris — And  is  that  the  school  to  which  my  Lord  Plunket 
there  (pointing  to  the  bench)  proclaims  to  his  tenantry  his  ‘earnest 
desire’  that  they  should  send  their  children  ?  Yes. 

‘  ‘  A  school  the  object  of  which  is  to  bring  them  up  Protestants  ? 
Yes. 

“Mr.  Morris— Good  God  !  what  a  landlord  ! 

“Mr.  Townsend — All  my  schools  are  under  the  Irish  Church 
Mission  Society  to  bring  the  children  up  Protestants.” 

I  was  only  a  fortnight  in  the  parish  when  himself  and  another 
missionary  met  me,  as  I  was  returning  from  the  discharge  of  some 
parochial  duty,  on  the.  public  road.  I  there  had  a  challenge  to 
controversy  flung  at  me  (the  bishop’s  daughter,  as  I  believe,  looking 
on),  and  on  my  declining  the  honor  of  entering  the  lists,  Mr. 
Townsend  told  me,  what  he  himself  has  sworn,  that  1  was  “the 
minister  of  Antichrist,”  and  then,  out  of  a  thought,  asked  me 
“  was  I  married.  ”  This  conduct  I  reported  to  the  bishop  the  same 
evening ;  and  next  day  got  a  reply  to  say  that  he  quite  approved 
of  it,  and  that  he  would  always  “encourage”  such  a  spirit  on  the 
part  of  the  “clergymen  of  his  diocese.” 

Such  is  the  character  of  the  man  whom  Lord  Plunket  would 
have  the  instructor  of  his  tenants’  children — such  the  schools  to 
which  he  would  have  them  resort — such  the  conduct  “encouraged  ” 
by  Lord  Plunket  himself. 

:  As  to  the  other  characters  employed  by  Lord  Plunket — one  of 
them,  a  Scripture-reader  of  the  name  of  Donnelly,  swore  in  Ballin- 
robe  and  Claremorris  that  he  himself  was  a  saint ;  having  called 
me,  on  the  other  hand,  on  two  occasions,  to  my  face,  a  devil. 
Another  of  them,  O’Donell,  in  my  hearing ,  and  while  he  was  de¬ 
manding  the  children  of  William  Cavanagh,  told  Cavanagh's  wife 

2  K 


514 


APPENDIX. 


in  her  own  house,  “the  Blessed  Virgin  was  a  sinner,  and  no  better 
than  any  other  woman  !  ”  It  is  with  such  instruments,  aided  by 
the  crowbar,  that  Lord  Plunket  would  work  out  the  “  conversion  ” 
of  his  Partry  tenants. 

Now,  Mr.  Townsend  swore  I  was  the  minister  of  Antichrist. 
In  turn  I  gave  the  following  evidence  : — 

‘  ‘  Bev.  Mr.  Lavelle — He  then  told  me  I  was  the  devil,  and  put 
out  his  tongue  at  me. 

“  Cross-examined  by  Mr.  Sergeant  Fitzgibbon — I  never  spoke  to 
Lord  Plunket  in  my  life ;  I  never  saw  any  tenant  of  his  turned 
out  on  the  road,  except  Tom  Thornton  and  his  family,  who  were 
thrown  out  with  their  bed  on  -the  road  about  May  twelve- 
months  ;  I  saw  them  on  the  road,  but  I  did  not  see  any  one  in 
the  act  of  turning  them  out ;  they  made  me  weej)  at  the  scene. 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — You  do  not  approve  of  the  doctrines 
taught  in  these  schools  ? 

“  Witness — Of  course  not. 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — You  consider  these  doctrines  damnable? 

“Mr.  Lavelle — No  ;  I  believe  them  to  be  erroneous  ;  but  I  would 
be  very  sorry  to  call  the  doctrines  of  any  Christian  community 
damnable  (signs  of  approbation  in  court). 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — Then  would  you  consider  them  anti- 
christian  doctrines  ? 

‘  ‘  Father  Lavelle — That  question  is  equivocal,  and  I  therefore 
cannot  give  it  a  categorical  answer  :  please  to  explain,  Serjeant 
Fitzgibbon. 

“Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — You  must  answer  it,  sir!  are  these 
doctrines  anticliristian  ? 

“Mr.  Lavelle  (to  the  court) — Your  lordship,  I  have  said  that  the 
question  being  of  an  equivocal  character,  I  cannot  answer  it  by  a 
simple  “yes”  or  “no;”  let  counsel  explain;  I  shall  answer  it 
freely  and  frankly. 

“  Court  (to  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon) — He  says  he  cannot  answer  the 
question  in  the  shape  proposed ;  so  you  had  better  explain. 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — Let  him  explain  it  himself. 

“Mr.  Lavelle — Then,  my  lord,  by  “  antichristian  doctrines  ”  he 
means  either  the  doctrines  of  Antichrist,  or  doctrines  not  taught 
by  Christ ;  if  the  former,  I  say  they  are  not  antichristian,  as 
those  of  no  Christian  Church  should  be  thus  designated.  If  the 
latter,  they  are — as,  of  course,  to  be  consistent,  I  must  maintiiin 
that  they  are — not  in  their  entirety  the  doctrines  of  our  Lord 
(approval  in  court). 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — Are  they  then  Christian  doctrines  ? 

“  Mr.  Lavelle — Yes,  they  are. 

“  Serjeant  Fitzgibbon — Are  they  saving  doctrines  ? 

“Mr.  Lavelle — Not  in  their  entirety — several  are.  Iam  sure 
that  Protestant  laymen  and  clergymen  believe  in  .them,  and  I  re¬ 
spect  their  belief,  and  only  claim  for  my  own  a  similar 
respect  and  toleration. 

“I)o  you  think  the  persons  you  call  ‘  jumpers  ’  believe  in  those 


APPENDIX. 


515 


doctrines  ?  To  answer  that  frankly,  I  must  say  I  think  the 
persons  who  go  under  that  name  in  this  country  do  not  sincerely 
believe  in  them  ;  of  those  who  go  by  the  name  of  ‘  jumpers,’  pos¬ 
sibly  some  may,  but  they  are  very  rare;  by  ‘jumper’  I  mean 
a  poor  person  who  has  bartered  the  faith  he  believed  in  for  a 
different  faith,  for  the  sake  of  some  worldly  advantage,  means  or 
money;  I  do  not  believe  that  there  are  any  persons  ‘jumpers’ 
who  were  born  Protestants  ;  I  confine  the  name  to  a  person  who 
was  once  a  Catholic,  and  then  turned.  ” 

In  October,  1858,  I  was  appointed  to  Partry.  My  first  care 
was  to  soothe  down  the  feelings  of  Lord  Plunket,  and  by  gentle¬ 
ness  and  charity  to  bring  him  to  a  liberal  state  of  mind.  For  this 
purpose  I  wrote  to  him,  on  the  11th  October,  a  short  note  begging 
of  him  to  leave  the  poor  tenants  liberty  to  bring  up  their 
children  according  to  the  rules  of  their  own  Church  and  of  their 
conscience.  In  a  few  days  he  sent  me  an  ambiguous  reply,  in 
which  he  insinuated  that  the  people  freely  sent  their  children  to 
his  schools;  for  he  said  they  had  “chosen”  to  do  so.  I  re¬ 
joined  in  a  short  note,  expressing  my  great  satisfaction  at  the 
purport  of  his  lordship’s  letter,  and  a  hope  that  the  letter  would 
be  only  “the  harbinger  of  peace  and  harmony  between  all  de¬ 
nominations  in  the  parish  for  the  time  to  come.”  To  this  he  re¬ 
plied,  in  prompt  haste,  that  ‘  ‘  I  labored  under  a  misapprehension 
as  to  the  meaning  of  his  letter  ;  that  he  bound  himself  down  to  no 
particular  course  as  regarded  the  education  of  his  Catholic 
tenants’  children  ;  and  that  he  would  pursue  the  same  course  he 
always  did  ;  and  was  the  best  judge  of  his  own  affairs-”  He  con¬ 
cluded  by  saying  that  that  letter  of  his  should  terminate  our  cor¬ 
respondence.  However,  I  replied  that  “  my  apprehension  of  his 
meaning  was,  that  he  left  his  tenants  liberty  of  conscience — and 
was  it  possible  I  was  wrong  in  that  ?”  Of  course  I  got  no  reply  in 
words  ;  but  I  soon  saw  that  I  did  “labor  under  a  misapprehension,” 
for  the  daily  rounds  of  the  minister  and  the  bishop’s  daughters, 
with  bailiffs  and  Scripture-readers,  became  doubled  among  the 
villages  and  houses,  and  no  apology  would  be  taken  from  the 
parents  ;  the  fearful  alternative  being  sternly  left  them,  either  to 
send  the  children  or  quit  the  land.  I  beg  to  refer  you  back  to 
the  evidence  in  Galway,  while  I  here  insert  the  correspondence  re¬ 
ferred  to. 

Correspondence  between  Lord  Plunket  and  the  Lev.  Mr.  Lavelle 
in  reference  to  the  proselytizing  schools  : — 

Ho.  I.  ' 

“  To  the  Tight  Rev.  and  Tight  Hon.  Lord  PlunJcet. 

“Partr}’-,  October  11,  1858. 

“My  Lord, — I  take  the  liberty  of  addressing  your  lordship  on  a 
subject  that  deeply  concerns  you  and  me,  and  many  of  the  Catholic 
inhabitants  of  this  parish.  Being  now  entrusted  with  the  moral 


516 


APPENDIX. 


and  spiritual  training  of  its  Catholic  population,  I  am  bound  to  feel 
a  particular  interest,  as  I  am  to  exercise  a  particular  vigilance,  in 
whatever  appertains  to  this  training  ;  and  your  lordship  will  be  free 
to  admit  that  nothing  more  intimately  regards  it  than  the  education 
of  the  parochial  youth. 

“Now,  my  lord,  you  have  established  in  the  parish  schools 
conducted  by  Protestant  teachers,  and,  of  course,  on  Protestant 
principles.  To  these  schools  I  am  informed  [the  tenants  themselves 
were  after  telling  me] ’your  lordship’s  Catholic  tenantry  are  coerced, 
under  threat  of  eviction,  to  send  their  little  ones.  Some,  I  am 
told,  have  been  already  evicted  for  refusing  to  comply ;  some 
have  yielded  to  the  coercion,  against  the  promptings  of  conscience 
and  the  dictates  of  their  religion ;  and  several,  who  have  hitherto 
held  out,  now  find  themselves  in  the  cruel  alternative  of  either 
giving  up  their  children  to  your  lordship’s  teachers,  or  of  being, 
themselves  and  their  children,  driven,  helpless,  homeless  on  the 
world. 

‘  ‘  I  love  to  think  your  lordship  is  not  fully  aware  of  this  sad 
state  of  things,  and  I  therefore  feel  it  my  duty  to  inform  you  that 
the  poor  tenantry  are  visited  again  and  again  by  ladies  (of  whom 
I  wish  to  speak  in  terms  of  perfect  respect  and  courtesy),  and  com¬ 
manded,  under  the  terrible  sanction  referred  to,  to  submit  their 
little  ones  to  the  training  of  your  lordship’s  teachers.  I  trust  to 
your  lordship’s  sense  of  fair  play — to  your  love  of  perfect  liberty, 
to  leave  the  children  of  your  Catholic  tenantry  to  the  training  of 
the  Catholic  teachers  provided  for  them. 

“  Reverse  the  case  and  circumstances.  Let  us  for  a  moment 
exchange  positions.  Would  not  your  lordship  be  the  first  to 
reprobate  and  denounce  any  attempt  on  my  part  to  force  a  Catholic 
teaching  on  the  Protestants  committed  to  your  charge  ? 

“  For  the  rest,  I  beg  your  lordship  to  accept  my  assurance  of 
being  disposed  to  cultivate  the  relations  of  Christian  charity  with 
your  lordship,  and  I  once  more  trust  that  nothing  will  interfere  to 
prevent  its  growth  and  progress. 

“  I  have  the  honor,  &c., 

“Patrick  Lavelle.” 

To  this  the  bishop  replied  on  the  18th,  in  a  polite  note,  in  which 
he  spoke  of  his  tenants  having  “  chosen  to  send  their  children  to 
his  school.”  The  reply  I  looked  upon  as  an  evasion  ;  but  I  pitched 
on  that  word  “  chosen,”  and  from  it  drew  my  own  conclusion,  that 
he  meant  to  leave  his  tenants  at  liberty.  Under  these  circum¬ 
stances  I  rejoined  as  follows  : — 


No.  II. 

“  Partry,  22nd  October,  1S58. 

“My  Lord, —  With  much  pleasure  I  beg  to  acknowledge  your 
lordship’s  reply,  of  the  18th  inst.,  to  my  communication  of  the 
11th,  From  it  I  am  led  to  understand  that  it  is  not  your  lordship’s 


APPENDIX. 


I 


517 


wish  to  force  the  children  of  your  tenantry  to  your  lordship’s 
schools,  and  that  hitherto  you  only  accommodated  “those  who 
have  chosen  to  avail  themselves  of  the  benefits  offered  to  them  in 
those  schools.”  With  the  past  I  have  nothing  to  do  ;  and  this 
intimation  on  the  part  of  your  lordship  will,  I  trust — 1  am  confi¬ 
dent — be  the  harbinger  of  peace  and  good  feeling  among  all  parties 
in  this  parish.  We  all  wish  for  perfect  liberty  of  conscience. 
Wherever  this  is  accorded,  peace  and  charity  generally  prevail 
among  different  religionists ;  wherever  it  is  denied,  disorder  and 
religious  rancor  are  the  natural  fruits. 

“Again,  my  lord,  I  trust  that,  for  the  future,  it  shall  strike 
deep  roots  in  this  parish,  and  that  its  fruit  shall  be  love  and  har¬ 
mony  among  all  denominations  of  Christians. 

“  I  have  the  honor,  &c., 

“Patrick  Lavelle.” 

Here,  then,  had  the  bishop  a  wide  field  for  that  “  open  palm 
and  gentle  pressure  ”  expected  from  him  by  the  Times.  Here  had 
he  an  ample  opportunity  of  retracing  his  steps,  or  rather  of  keeping 
his  peace  ;  while,  instead,  what  does  he  do  ?  He  sits  down  at  once 
and  writes  me  the  following  curt  note,  to  say  I  “labored  under 
a  misapprehension”  in  my  interpretation  of  his  letter,  and,  on  his 
side,  putting  an  end  to  our  correspondence.  Here  is  his  letter:  — 

No.  III. 

“  Tourmakeady,  Hollymount,  Oct.  29,  1858. 

“Reverend  Sir, — I  beg  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your 
letter  of  the  24th  instant.  Lest  you  should  labor  under  any  mis¬ 
apprehension  with  regard  to  the  meaning  of  my  letter  of  the  18th 
instant,  and  suppose,  as  I  fear  you  do,  that  I  thereby  bind  myself 
down  to  any  restricted  course  of  action  as  regards  the  education 
of  my  Roman  Catholic  tenants,  I  beg  leave  to  refer  you  to  my 
former  communication,  in  which  I  merely  state  that  it  is  my 
intention  to  persevere  in  the  same  course  of  just  consideration  for 
the  welfare  of  my  tenants  which  I  have  hitherto  pursued,  and 
with  regard  to  which  I  feel  myself  in  every  way  fully  competent 
to  judge.  I  trust  this  explanation  will  render  any  further  corre¬ 
spondence  unnecessary. 

“  I  remain,  &c., 

“  Plunket.” 

Here,  now,  have  we  it  under  the  sign  and  seal  of  the  bishop 
himself: — First,  that  I  “labored  under  a  misapprehension  ” 
when  I  interpreted  his  first  letter  as  intimating  that  his 
tenants  were  not  ‘  ‘  forced  ”  to  send  their  children  to  the  schools  ; 
second,  that  he  would  pursue  the  “  same  courses  ”  he  always  did  ; 
and  third,  that  this  correction  on  his  part  of  my  apprehension  was 
to  terminate  our  correspondence.  Though  arguing  such  a  case 


518 


APPENDIX. 


would  seem  like  arguing  that  two  and  two  make  four,  let  me  make 
one  or  two  reflections  on  the  whole  matter. 

Then,  either  the  tenants  enjoyed  the  liberty  I  asked,  or  they  did 
not.  If  they  did  —why  should  Lord  Plunket  say  I  labored  under 
a  “  misapprehension  ”  when  I  supposed  they  did  ?  If  they  did 
not,  then  my  whole  case  is  established  by  one  stroke  of  the  bishop’s 
own  pen.  But  that  they  did  not,  either  before  or  after  this  cor¬ 
respondence,  I  have  sufficiently  established.  By  the  evidence  of 
his  own  tenants  I  have  shown  the  liberty  they  enjoyed  previously. 
B37  the  same  evidence  and  the  conduct  of  his  daughters,  nephew, 
minister,  and  agent,  inDrimcoggy  school  and  Gortnacullen,  I  have 
abundantly  established  for  the  time  subsequent.  So  that,  iu 
reality,  the  bishop  did  pursue  the  same  course  (of  “  just  conside¬ 
ration”  !  ! !)  for  the  welfare  of  his  tenants  both  before  and  after. 

It  was  some  time  after  this  I  wrote  to  complain  of  the  conduct 
of  the  minister,  who,  in  the  public  road,  called  me  a  minister  of 
Antichrist,  and  asked  me  was  “I  married.”  As  I  have  said,  he 
replied  that  he  quite  approved  of  their  conduct !  !  ! 

Lastly,  on  Christmas  Day,  I  wrote  to  him  the  following  letter, 
which'I  hoped  might  soften  him,  or  produce  some  change  in  his 
stubborn  resolve  : — 


No.  IV. 

“Partly,  Christmas  Day,  1858. 

“  My  Lord, — Contrary  to  an  intention  which  I  had  formed,  in 
accordance  with  your  lordship’s  wish,  I  now  beg  to  address  you, 
the  great  day  of  peace  on  which  we  have  entered  suggesting  such  a 
course. 

“  In  the  name,  then,  of  the  heavenly  peace  announced  to  us  on 
this  blessed  day,  I  pray  you,  my  lord,  to  put  an  end  to  the  un¬ 
christian  war  carried  on  in  your  lordship’s  property  under  the 
sanction  of  your  honored  name.  Your  tenantry  are  persecuted  for 
conscience’  sake,  as  no  others  in  this  or  any  other  kingdom  of 
Europe  are  at  this  moment.  Your  daughters  (whom  I  wish  to 
name  with  all  consideration),  with  bailiffs,  Bible-readers,  and 
proselytizing  teachers,  are  going  about  harassing  the  wretched 
people  beyond  all  endurance,  for  their  not  violating  the  sacred  laws 
of  conscience  and  their  Church  in  sending  their  children  to  the 
proselytizing  schools.  In  the  name  of  peace — of  that  God  of 
peace  whose  birth  we  all  commemorate  with  love  and  gratitude 
on  this  sacred  day — let  this  have  an  end.  Your  lordship  would 
sacrifice  life  and  all  before  allowing  your  own  children — these 
very  ladies — to  be  brought  up  in  a  faith  opposed  to  your  own. 
Allow,  therefore,  the  poor  peasant,  who  has  the  parent’s  heart  no 
less  than  the  peer,  allow  him  the  natural  right  in  his  own  and  in 
the  faith  of  his  fathers.  Allow  us,  my  lord,  to  enjoy  a  little  of 
that  heavenly  ‘  peace.  ’ 

“I  have  the  honor,  etc., 

“  Patrick  Lavelle.” 


APPENDIX. 


519 


On  tlie  following  morning  I  got  that  letter  back,  signed  in  the 
bishop’s  hand,  “  returned  unopened  ”  !  !  !  But,  as  certain  am  I  as 
that  I  write,  that  it  was  opened  by  somebody ;  for  I  found  the 
adhesive  portion  of  the  envelope  broken,  and,  besides,  I  wrote  in  a 
disguised  hand,  and  had  the  letter  posted  at  a  distance,  to  make 
sure  of  its  reaching  its  destination,  as  I  had  been  told  that  it  was 
in  danger  of  being  intercepted  if  known  to  have  come  from  me. 

But,  however  this  may  be,  about  which  I  merely  offer  an 
opinion,  that  letter  and  the  others  sufficiently  prove  my  anxiety 
for  “  peace  ”  and  “harmony,”  and  that  for  all  the  heart-burnings 
that  have  since  been  created,  the  bishop,  by  4  4  pursuing  the  same 
course  he  always  did,”  is  before  God  and  man  responsible. 

However,  he  now  sees  the  consequences,  in  the  universal  cry  of 
horror  and  indignation  raised  against  him  by  every  honest  man  of 
every  class  and  mind  in  this  country.  Such  was  the  manner  in 
which  I  endeavored  to  conciliate  the  proselytizing  bishop — such 
the  way  in  which  he  met  my  approaches. 

Here  dates  are  all-important.  Be  it  remembered,  I  wrote  my 
first,  and  very  conciliating,  letter  to  the  bishop,  on  the  11th  of 
October,  1858.  He  replied  evasively  on  the  ISth  ;  I  rejoined  on 
the  22nd,  expressing  my  delight  “that  this  intimation  of  his 
tenants  being  under  no  coercion  as  regarded  the  schools  would  be 
the  harbinger  of  peace  and  good  feeling  among  all  parties  in  this 
parish,  and  that  its  fruit  would  be  love  and  harmony  among  all 
denominations  of  Christiaus.”  He  again  responded  on  the  29th, 
saying  that  I  labored  under  a  misapprehension  with  regard  to  the 
meaning  of  his  letter,  and  that  that  explanation  should  render 
any  further  correspondence  unnecessary.  This  letter  at  once 
opened  my  eyes,  but  the  practical  commentary  it  was  then  actually 
receiving  left  no  doubt  on  my  mind.  I  now  crave  attention  to 
what  follows. 

One  village,  Gortnaeullen,  had  hitherto  held  out  on  the  plea  of 
its  distance  from  the  school  ;  but  no  excuse  would  now  be  taken. 
Mr.  Townsend,  young  Mr.  Plunket,  the  daughters,  and  the 
agent,  assembled  in  the  school  of  Drimcoggy  towards  the  end  of 
October,  1858,  sent  for  the  tenants,  called  in  each  separately, 
demanded  the  children,  and  were  refused.  They  were  then  and 
there  told  to  prepare  for  eviction.  (  Vide  the  evidence  of  Pat 
Henaghan, .  one  of  the  tenants  then  assembled.)  A  few  days 
•  later,  October  30th,  the  agent,  bailiff,  and  daughters,  came  to  the 
village  itself,  again  assembled  the  parents,  demanded  the  children, 
got  no  answer,  and  then  and  there  did  the  amiable  4  4  apostles  in 
petticoats,  missionary  ladies  in  crinoline  and  gauze”  (as  Mr. 
Bourke  has  called  them),  order  the  agent  to  come  next  morning 
and  take  possession  of  the  land,  for  that  44  Lord  Plunket  would 
have  no  person  on  his  land  who  would  not  send  his  children  to 
the  schools.”  Next  morning  the  agent  did  come  and  demanded 
possession.  I  advised  the  people  not  to  give  it.  The  agent  then 
said  something  about  “striping  the  land.”  This  I  knew  to  be 
the  merest  subterfuge,  and  at  once  said  to  him  :  44  Oh,  sir  !  if  you 


520 


APPENDIX. 


only  want  to  stripe  the  land,  and  not  to  force  the  parents,  as  you 
and  the  Misses  Plunket  threatened  last  evening,  to  send  their 
children  to  the  schools,  by  all  means  you  must  get  possession. 
Only  give  us  your  word  that  this  is  your  bona  fide  object,  and 
everything  is  settled.”  Thereupon  “the  cat  came  out  of  the 
bag,”  and  the  agent  acknowledged  that  they  should  send  their 
children  to  the  schools,  and  obey  Lord  Plunket  in  doing  so,  and 
that  in  not  obeying  him  “  they  deserved  to  be  evicted” !  !  This  I 
swore  before  Mr.  Faulkner  in  Galway,  and  he  dared  not  contra¬ 
dict  me.  Next  day,  which  was  Sunday,  I  implored  of  all  the 
people  to  withdraw  their  children.  They  did  so,  flinging  them¬ 
selves  on  the  pavement,  and  making  a  promise  to  heaven  to  that 
effect,  and  hitherto  no  amount  of  menace  or  persecution  has  been 
able  to  bring  them  back. 

To  detail  the  persecutions  that  followed  would  be  a  tedious 
task.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  impounding  cattle  out  of  bare  and 
unfenced  mountains — exacting  exorbitant  poundage  and  trespass 
fees — summoning  on  the  most  frivolous  pretences — turning  men 
out  of  employment,  etc.,  etc.,  became  the  order  of  the  day.  I 
reckoned,  one  day,  so  many  as  eighty  head  of  cattle  in  the  pound, 
and  the  pound-keeper  would  not  so  much  as  tell  the  owner  who 
impounded  them.  One  horse  spent  five  days  there,  and  died  the 
day  after  he  was  released  (his  owner’s  name  was  Meehanan).  By 
these  means  it  was  thought  to  break  the  resolve  of  the  people,  but 
in  vain.  In  vain  also  the  visits  of  the  minister  and  ladies,  with 
their  threat  of  the  notice  to  quit.  At  length,  in  February,  1859, 
Lord  Plunket  himself  comes  prominently  on  the  scene,  and  issues 
a  printed  circular  among  his  tenantry,  in  which  he  declares  to 
them  that  “it  is  Lord  Plunket’s  earnest  desire  that  all  his 
tenants  should  send  their  children  to  those  schools,  and  that  he 
shall  take  every  opportunity  of  strongly  impressing  on  their  minds 
his  own  wishes  in  this  matter.”  He  adds  :  “  Previous  to  the  first 
of  May  each  year,  a  notice  to  quit  shall  be  served  on  the  tenantry 
throughout  the  estate.”  Thus  the  bishop  gives  a  gentle  hint  as  to 
how  and  to  what  “ opportunities ” he  would  “impress  his  earnest 
desire  on  all  his  tenantry.”  To  be  sure,  he  says,  all  this  is  for 
the  sake  of  “  striping  the  land but  we  have  already  seen  the 
sort  of  striping  required  by  the  young  ladies,  agent,  minister, 
etc.,  etc.,  and  the  “  obedience”  demanded  of  the  tenants  to  the 
“earnest  desire”  of  the  landlord.  In  poiut  of  fact,  the  land  out  * 
of  which  the  tenants  were  lately  evicted  was,  except  in  two 
instances,  all  striped. 

Of  course,  Lord  Plunket  says  this  “earnest  desire,”  so  strongly 
impressed  “  at  every  opportunity,”  means  no  compulsion.  Oh  !  no  ; 
compulsion  is  a  nasty  word  in  matters  of  religion.  But  will  any 
man  outside  Bedlam  attempt  to  say  that  the  ‘  ‘  earnest  desire 
strongly  impressed,”  in  season  and  out  of  season,  by  an  Irish 
landlord  on  a  tenant-at-will,  does  not  mean  compulsion  of  the  most 
urgent  kind?  Lord  Plunket  continues  :  “To  the  well  disposed 
it  (the  notice  to  quit)  can  prove  only  a  nominal  form,  while  in  the 


APPENDIX. 


521 


case  of  others  it  will  act,  Lord  Plunket  hopes,  as  a  successful  and 
salutary  check.”  Ah  !  who  is  the  well-disposed  tenant  ?  Is  it  not 
he  who  fulfils  the  “earnest  desire”  of  the  strongly  impressing 
master  ?  or  will  any  landlord  look  upon  his  tenant  as  well-disposed, 
while  the  latter  is  in  constant  and  contumacious  opposition  to  the 
master’s  “  earnest  desire  ”? 

But  argument  here  is  loss  of  words  and  time.  The  thing  is 
manifest.  Let  us  illustrate  it  by  only  one  example. 

In  1857,  several  tenants  of  Drimcoggy  had  still  held  out  against 
sending  their  children  to  the  school  when  others  had  yielded. 
The  former  were  at  length  served  with  notice  to  quit,  and  told,  in 
as  many  terms,  that  unless  they  also  yielded  they  would  be  evicted. 
However,  they  kept  firm  until  the  six  months  were  expired,  and 
the  ejectment  was  on  the  eve  of  being  served.  They  then  assem¬ 
bled  together,  discussed  the  alternative  of  yielding  or  being  driven 
out ;  and  after  several  hours’  discussion,  and  in  a  flood  of  tears , 
they  agreed  to  sacrifice  their  children  rather  than  lose  the  land. 
Next  day  the  little  ones  were  conducted  in  triumph  to  the  schools 
by  the  Bible-readers,  one  of  them  having  attempted  self-destruc¬ 
tion  rather  than  be  given  up.  This  is  the  son  of  John  Prender- 
gast.  The  other’s  names  are  :  Daniel  Meenaglian,  Patt  Cavanagh, 
William  Cavanagh,  John  Prendergast  (Tom),  Patt  Darkan,  Philip 
Prendergast,  etc.  Be  it  remembered,  the  land  of  these  men  was 
already  striped ,  so  that  in  their  case  there  could  be  no  such  pre¬ 
tence. 

In  spite  of  the  terrible  menace  held  over  their  heads,  the  poor 
tenants  held  out.  For  several  years  the  majority  of  them  had 
been  deprived  of  the  sacraments  of  their  Church,  for  exposing  the 
faith  of  their  children,  and  they  would  not  again  condemn  them¬ 
selves  to  the  same  privation — would  not  again  offend  God.  Of 
each  and  every  one  of  them  might  be  said,  what  John  Prender¬ 
gast  swore  in  Galway,  that  “  since  the  day  they  sent  their  chil¬ 
dren  to  the  school,  a  bit  they  ate  did  not  do  them  good,  as  they 
knew  they  were  acting  contrary  to  their  conscience  and  to  God.  ” 
May-day  arrived,  and  with  it  the  dread  notice  to  quit.  November 
followed,  and  'with  it  sixty  ejectments  in  the  Court  of  Queen’s 
Bench  ;  March,  1860,  came,  and  with  it  sixty  records  at  the 
Castlebar  assizes.  At  the  eleventh  hour  a  settlement  was  effected 
on  the  following  terms  : — that  the  tenants  should,  on  their  part, 
withdraw  their  defence,  on  the  understanding  that  Lord  Plunket, 
on  his,  would  not  evict  one  of  them  on  the  ejectments  pending. 
The  Rev.  M.  Conway,  P.P.,  Headford,  came  to  me  with  these 
terms  from  Mr.  Faulkner,  on  the  part  of  Lord  Plunket.  He  is  at 
present  in  America,  but,  pending  his  absence,  I  must  only  offer,  as 
proof  of  this  arrangement,  the  following  documents  ; — 


522 


APPENDIX. 


“  LORD  PLUNKET  AND  HIS  TENANTS. 

“  March  15,  1860. 

“An  arrangemeut  of  a  very  satisfactory  character  has  happily 
been  entered  into  at  these  assizes, -by  which  it  is  hoped  that  all 
the  bickerings  and  annoyances  between  Lord  Plunket  and  his 
tenantry  are  put  an  end  to  for  ever.  In  the  Record  Court  there  was 
for  trial  an  ejectment  against  one  of  these  tenants  (the  result  of 
wThich  rules  sixty  other  cases),  and  in  which  a  consent  for  judg¬ 
ment  was  by  arrangement  entered  by  defendant’s  counsel,  the 
counsel  of  Lord  Plunket  undertaking  that  it  should  not  be  acted 
on  either  against  the  defendant  or  any  others  of  his  tenantry,  his 
only  object  being  to  stripe  the  land,  and  not  to  disturb  or  evict 
any  of  them,  except  two  or  three  disorderly  characters ;  also  that 
he  would  not  seek  the  costs  of  these  proceedings,  and  would  not  for 
the  future  permit  any  interference  with  the  children  of  his  tenantry, 
or  require  them  to  attend  his  schools  in  Partry.  Counsel  on  both 
sides  expressed  their  satisfaction  at  this  result,  and  his  lordship 
(Mr.  Justice  Hayes)  concurred  in  these  observations,  and  stated 
that  he  was  happy  that  these  proceedings  had  terminated  so 
amicably.  In  consequence  of  the  foregoing  arrangement,  and  for 
the  purpose  of  further  promoting  harmony  and  good  feeling  in  the 
district,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Lavelle  came  into  the  Crown  Court,  and  by 
his  counsel  withdrew  his  prosecution  against  the  Rev.  Mr.  Goodi- 
son  for  presenting  a  pistol  at  him  and  threatening  to  shoot  him, 
and  a  nolle  prosequi  was  entered  thereon.  — Freeman's  Correspon¬ 
dent.” 


“MR.  GRIFFIN’S  LETTEPv. 

\  . 

“  The  Partry  Case. 

“Court  House,  Castlebar,  Monday. 

“I  hasten  to  apprise  you,  and  through  you  the  public,  of  the 
happy  termination  of  the  ejectment  proceedings  at  suit  of  Lord 
Plunket,  against  his  Partry  tenantry,  pending  at  this  assizes.  The 
cases  have  this  moment  been  settled  on  the  most  fair  and  equita¬ 
ble  terms  to  all  parties,  and  on  conditions  affording  gratification 
not  only  to  those  immediately  concerned,  but  also  to  the  vast 
numbers  who  were  to  witness  the  trial.  Lord  Plunket  arrived 
here  this  morning,  and  immediately  after,  by  the  advice  of  the 
Rev.  P.  Conway,  P.  P. ,  Headford,  a  memorial,  signed  by  the  seve¬ 
ral  defendants,  was  addressed  to  his  lordship,  praying  him  to  con¬ 
sider  their  case,  and  not  to  evict  them.  I  am  happy  to  be  enabled 
to  inform  you  that  Lord  Plunket  received  the  memorial  in  the 
kindest  manner,  and  the  cases  have  terminated  by  the  attorneys 


APPENDIX. 


523 


for  the  tenants— namely,  Mr.  D.  E.  Blake  and  myself — and  his 
lordship’s  attorney  signing  a  consent  for  judgment  without  costs, 
his  lordship’s  leading  counsel,  Mr.  Robinson,  Q.C.,  having  stated 
in  court  that  he  was  glad  to  find  that  the  tenantry  were  so  well 
advised,  and  that  he  was  happy  to  say,  on  the  part  of  Lord  Plun- 
ket,  that  he  would  not  evict,  out  of  the  fifty-nine  ejectments 
brought,  more  than  one  or  two,  who  were  particularly  obnoxious 
to  his  lordship  (if  any).  Mr.  Blake,  Q.O.,  one  of  the  leading 
counsel  for  the  tenants,  expressed  the  pleasure  he  felt  that  the 
cases  were  so  happily  terminated  through  the  timely  intervention 
of  a  kiud  friend  of  the  tenantry.  This  kind  friend  was  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Conway,  who  nobly  sustained  the  Rev.  Mr.  Lavelle  and  his 
people  during  this  unequal  struggle.  The  learned  judge  congratu¬ 
lated  the  county  and  the  public  at  large  on  this  amicable  arrange¬ 
ment,  aud  hoped  it  would  be  the  means  of  restoring  peace  and 
good  order  in  this  county,  and  said  he  was  sure  while  Lord 
Plunket  desired  to  maintain  the  rights  of  property,  he  was  satis¬ 
fied  that  Lord  Plunket  would  discharge  the  duties  that  devolved 
on  him  as  a  landlord,  and  would  act  considerately  towards  his 
tenantry.  There  was  a  considerable  amount  of  excitement  and 
anxiety  felt  in  the  cases,  and  for  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  tenantry, 
but  now  all  is  tranquil,  and  the  people  have  gone  home  happy  and 
rejoicing. 

‘  ‘  I  am,  dear  Dr.  Gray,  yours  sincerely, 

“John  Griffin.” 


From  the  Mayo  Telegraph  of  March  16,  I860. 

“  Mr.  Morris  (one  of  the  people’s  counsel)  informed  his  lordship, 
that,  happily  for  the  peace  of  that  disturbed  portion  of  the  county, 
a  most  amicable  arrangement  had  been  made  in  the  other  court 
during  the  day,  at  which  Mr.  Justice  Hayes  expressed  his  most 
hearty  approval.  The  arrangements  were  to  the  effect,  that  the 
people  were  not  to  he  disturbed  from  their  holdings  ;  that  they  be 
not  required  to  send  their  children  to  the  proselytizing  schools  any 
more,  &c. 

‘  ‘  Mr.  Morris  then  stated  that  true  bills  had  been  found  against 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Goodison  for  an  attempt  to  shoot  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Lavelle  ;  that,  in  consequence  of  the  turn  things  had  taken,  Mr. 
Lavelle,  in  order  to  complete  the  amicable  arrangement ,  was 
anxious  to  withdraw  the  charge,  and  let  the  prosecution  cease. 

“Mr.  Armstrong,  on  the  part  of  the  crown,  said,  from  the  ge¬ 
neral  disposition  manifested  to  restore  the  peace  and  harmony  so 
much  wanted,  he  thought  the  ends  of  justice  would  be  best 
promoted  by  yielding  to  Rev.  Mr.  Lavelle’s  request,  and  he  would 
therefore  enter  a  nolle  prosequi. 

“  Thus  ended  the  Partry  war  in  a  manner,  we  are  happy  to  say, 
highly  creditable  to  all  concerned.  We  understand  the  settlement 


524 


APPENDIX. 


was  brought  on  by  the  kind  offices  of  Father  Conway,  who,  as 
a  mediator,  was  occupied  by  both  parties  ;  and,  in  justice  both  to 
Lord  Plunket  and  Father  Lavelle,  we  understand  his  task  was 
an  exceedingly  easy  one,  as  there  was  no  disposition  on  either  side 
either  to  concede  too  little,  or  to  demand  too  much.” 

Lord  Plunket’s  own  organ,  the  Mayo  Constitution ,  spoke  in  a 
similar  strain,  observing  that  the  bishop  only  wanted  to  assert 
“ his  legal  rights,”  and  complimenting  me  on  my  “good  sense” 
in  obtaining  the  nolle  prosequi  in  favour  of  Mr.  Goodison. 

Thus,  whatever  Lord  Plunket  intended  within  his  own  mind,  it 
is  manifest  he  left  the  people  and  the  public  under  the  impression 
that  ‘  ‘  peace  was  restored,  ”  and  that  a  new  card  was  to  be  played 
henceforth  in  the  mountains  of  Partry. 

Yet  this  very  “settlement,”  so  much  rejoiced  in  by  all  good  men, 
was  only  the  first  step  with  the  bishop  in  a  new  war  more  fierce 
and  deadly  than  ever  !  ! 

Such  was  the  excitement  created  by  the  ejectments,  that  men  of 
all  creeds  and  classes  congratulated  each  other  on  their  happpy 
termination  ;  and  in  the  fulness  of  my  own  satisfaction,  and  in 
order  to  relieve  Lord  Plunket  of  pain  and  anxiety,  it  was  that  I 
went  into  the  Crown  Court  the  same  day,  and,  as  stated,  obtained 
the  nolle  prosequi  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Goodison,  a  thing  I  never 
would  have  done  had  I  thought  Lord  Plunket  would  break  through 
our  settlement.  But  I  soon  discovered  that  I  had  been  tricked. 
Three  days  after  the  assize,  Mr.  Faulkner,  the  agent,  came  to  the 
parish,  assembled  the  sixty,  told  them  they  were  now  in  Lord 
Plunket’s  power,  and  that  seventeen  of  them  would  be  surely 
evicted.  The  poor  people  got  alarmed,  and  I  endeavored  to 
appease  them  by  saying  Lord  Plunket  would  not  break  his  word. 
Some,  however,  shook  their  heads,  and  said  that,  as  it  depended  on 
his  word,  they  had  little  hopes  of  being  unmolested.  Again  the 
agent  came — and  again  the  same  threat — and  again  and  again  the 
same  threat  from  the  mouth  of  every  bailiff,  Bible-reader,  and 
minister  who  propagate  the  Gospel  at  Tourmakeady.  The  event 
has  verified  the  “broken  pledge,”  and  this  moment  there  are 
wandering  through  the  mountains  of  Partry,  in  sight  of  their  once 
happy  homes,  seventy  human  outcasts  at  the  hand  of  this  Christian 
bishop — this  man  of  God — this  successor  of  St.  Paul ! ! ! 

Let  me  now  offer  a  few  observations  on  these  evictions.  They 
took  place  on  the  21st,  22nd,  and  23rd  November  last,  in  violation  of 
the  settlement,  already  alluded  to  as  having  taken  place  in  Castlebar 
last  March.  During  the  day  and  night  of  the  20th,  the  military 
and  police  continued  to  pour  into  the  devoted  district.  The  mili¬ 
tary,  a  company  of  the  20th  regiment,  came  from  the  Curragh. 
The  police  were  summoned  from  every  part  of  the  county.  Sheriff 
and  sub-sheriff,  both  escorted  by  a  body  of  mounted  police,  made 
their  appearance  at  nine  o’clock  on  the  morning  of  the  21st 
instant.  In  an  hour  after,  they  led  their  army  of  destruction  knee 
deep  through  the  flood  into  the  remote  and  quiet  village  of  Derri - 
vina.  The  military  take  up  their  position. 


APPENDIX. 


5  25 


1.  The  sheriff,  surrounded  by  the  host  of  police,  advances 
towards  the  house  of  Edward  Joyce,  whose  land  was  striped. 
Himself  and  his  wife  and  four  shivering  children  are  standing  at 
the  door.  Resistance  is  useless.  J ust  as  useless  as  those  big, 
crystal  tears  that  stream  down  the  mother’s  pallid  cheek,  or  those 
cries  of  the  little  ones  that  are  echoed  by  the  surrounding  hills. 
Police  are  placed  at  each  door  ;  the  sheriff  enters  ;  the  occupants 
go  out ;  the  mother  with  a  scream  that  reaches  up  to  heaven  ;  the 
father  with  a  wild  gaze  and  a  curse,  that  he  ever  attempted  to 
bring  to  justice  the  man  whom  he  regarded  as  a  murderer ; 
the  three  little  ones  clinging  to  the  father’s  knee,  and  looking  up 
to  him  for  protection  from  what  they  feel,  but  cannot  know,  to  be 
some  terrible  calamity;  and  the  infant  at  the  breast,  looking 
round  even  with  a  kind  of  infantine  suprise  and  curiosity  at  this 
terrible  array.  Murphy,  the  head  of  the  crowbar-brigade  (hired 
in  Church  street),  is  called  by  the  sheriff.  He  iu  turn  summons 
“his  men  each  takes  up  his  position.  Thug,  thush,  clank,  goes 
the  crowbar,  and  crash  come  down  the  walls,  gable,  roof,  and  all. 

2.  Off  and  away,  without  taking  breath,  to  the  house  of  Patt 
Lally,  whose  land  teas  striped,  and  against  whom  no  man  ever 
thought  a  criminal  charge.  Four  in  family,  himself,  his  wife,  and 
two  little  ones,  are  standing  before  the  door.  The  same  cry,  the 
same  anguish,  the  same  preparatory  movements,  the  same  crash, 
and  the  same  fate.  Their  little  effects  are  flung  on  the  dunghill. 
Who  will  have  the  courage  to  take  them  in  to-night  ? 

3.  Back  from  this  to  Tom  Lally’s.  He  and  his  wife  are  inside  ; 
the  sheriff  enters,  orders  them  out.  The  house,  they  say,  is  theirs, 
they  built  it,  and  brought  stones  and  lime  many  a  long  mile  across 
lakes  and  through  mountains  to  make  it  the  neat  abode  it  is. 
“Nomatter;  out,  out, ”  cried  the  sheriff ;  “Murphy,  do  your  work;” 
and  Murphy  and  two  more  of  “his  men”  seize  on  the  woman,  one 
by  the  hair  of  the  head,  two  more  by  the  body,  and  thus,  my 
eyes  looking  on>  drag  her  like  a  dog  out  of  that  lately  happy  home, 
and  fling  her  on  the  dunghill.  Meantime  the  “police  ”  are  called 
in,  and,  aided  by  half  a  dozen  of  Murphy’s  men,  they  seize  on  the 
man,  fling  him  on  the  earth,  press  on  him  with  their  knees,  and 
carry  him  bodily  through  the  other  door,  and  fling  him  likewise  on 
the  mire  without.  There  they  stand,  the  husband  and  wife,  gazing 
at  each  other  for  an  instant — the  husband  pale  as  death,  and  not 
able  to  breathe  from  the  violence  used  towards  him  ;  the  wife,  brave 
woman,  cheering  him  up  with  the  cry,  ‘ 4  Thank  God,  they  cannot 
turn  us  out  of  heaven.”  The  work  is  soon  over  there;  and  Tom 
Lally  is  told  that  if  his  little  stock  of  hay  and  oats  “is  found  in 
the  haggard”  to-morrow,  it  will  be  scattered  to  the  wind.  Twelve 
months  ago  he  bid  off  Crump,  the  Scripture-reader.  Crump  then 
told  him  he  would  before  tivelve  months  be  begging  his  ( Crump's) 
pardon. 

4.  Off  again  go  the  “  legal  burglars.”  Again,  with  a  devotion 
worthy  of  a  better  cause,  clo  they  wade  the  flooded  stream.  They 
cross  to  the  house  of  John  Boyle,  whose  land  was  striped,  and  whose 
crime  was  lending  me  a  cart.  The  house  is  full  of  people.  John 


526 


APPENDIX. 


Boyle  and  liis  sons  and  friends  are  brave  and  determined  men.  I 
apprehend  a  “danger  of  the  peace,”  and,  be  I  right  or  wrong,  I 
spare  the  sheriff  the  trouble  of  ‘  ‘  clearing  the  house.  ”  The  brigade 
has  arrived.  You  see  an  uneasy  look  about  the  sheriff.  He  steals 
a  suspicious  glance  at  me.  I  reply  to  it  with  a  smile  at  his  alarm. 
I  order  those  who  were  about  the  door  to  retire.  They  obey  at 
once.  The  sheriff  is  assured,  and  the  same  operation  as  before  is 
repeated.  Crash,  crash,  come  stones,  mortar,  beams,  thatch,  and 
lathing,  and  all. 

5.  The  army  forms,  the  word  of  command  is  given,  “  right 
about  face,”  “  quick  march,”  and  the  house  of  Martin  Lally  is  next 
surrounded.  Here  the  gallant  colonel  who  commanded  the  £  4  Blan¬ 
ket  brigade,”  seems  more  ill  at  ease  still.  Lally  is  an  old  man, 
and  up  to  this  moment  no  man  ever  even  suspected  him  of  a  crimi¬ 
nal  offence.  But  he  is  as  brave  and  spirited  as  he  is  honest.  And 
the  invading  foe  feared,  perhaps,  that  Lally  would  not  “give 
quiet  and  peaceable  posession.”  No  matter.  There  is  no  need  of 
this  alarm.  As  in  the  former  case,  so  here,  too,  I  “  cleared  the 
house,  ”  and  the  sheriff  is  again  assured.  Again  the  same  opera¬ 
tion,  and  the  same  result.  The  honestest  and  the  best  man  in  the 
parish,  with  his  ten  in  family,  is  houseless. 

The  day’s  work  is  over,  and  the  sheriff  and  “his  men”  retire  for 
the  night,  exhausted  by  their  work  of  devastation.  Tourmakeady 
cellars  are  soon  open ;  Tourmakeady  tables  are  soon  strewn  with 
choicest  viands  and  wines;  champagne,  claret,  and  eau  de  vie 
soon  make  the  heroes  of  the  terrible  day  forget  their  toils,  and 
prepare  them  for  renewed  exertions  next  morning.  Night 
falls,  and  such  a  night !  Not  even  this  year  has  there  been  such 
deluging  sleet  and  rain ;  and  exposed  to  all  this  did  some  of  the 
evicted  lie  that  night  by  the  ditch  side  ! 

6.  Morning  comes  again  ;  but  the  rain,  so  far  from  abating, 
seems  to  fall  with  increased  violence.  It  blows  a  storm.  “No 
one,”  thought  I,  “will  venture  out  to-day.”  But  soon  was  I 
to  be  disappointed  ;  and,  at  nine  o’clock,  word  was  brought  me, 
“They  are  going  over  the  road,  sir.”  Yes,  there  they  were, 
sheriff,  police,  and  brigade,  but  no  military.  I  soon  joined  them, 
as  they  approached  the  first  house,  that  of  poor  old  Michael 
Cavanagh.  “  Halt,”  cries  the  police-officer,  lately  a  kind  of 
“preacher”  or  “Scripture-reader;”  “right  about,”  “form,” 
and  the  house  of  the  venerable  old  man  is  surrounded.  Out 
rushes  a  young  woman  with  the  bedclothes  that  sheltered  the 
old  man  last  night.  There  she  flings  them  on  the  soaked  earth, 
as  the  rain  and  sleet  pour  upon  them  with  a  fury ;  out  again  a 
young  man,  a  child  four  years  old  clinging  to  his  knees  ;  next 
comes  the  pot  of  potatoes  intended  for  the  humble  morning’s  meal 
of  the  miserable  victims ;  it  is  flung  on  the  dung-heap,  and  the 
steam  rises  up  to  heaven,  as  if  symbolizing  the  sacrifice  of  those 
it  was  intended  to  nourish  for ,  the  day.  Next  comes  a  young 
mother  with  a  cradle  and  baby,  on  whose  innocent  brow  the 
angry  rain  mercilessly  pelts ;  the  young  thing  screams,  and  the 


APPENDIX. 


527 


mother  gathers  it  tip  and  hugs  it  to  her  maternal  bosom ;  as  she  does 
so,  the  mother  breaks  out,  and  the  tear  and  the  cry  issue  together 
with  uncontrolled  spontaneity.  Lastly  totter  out  the  old  man  of 
eighty  and  the  old  woman  of  seventy -four,  whose  very  appearance 
would  overcome  the  strongest  nerves,  and  there  made  many  an 
eye  weep  on  the  instant.  The  quiet  moans  of  the  old  couple 
still  ring  in  my  ears.  “  Oh  !”  said  she,  “  see  me,  three  score  and 
fourteen  years  old,  that  never  yet  harmed  mortal,  that  often 
sheltered  the  houseless  and  the  poor  !  What  have  I  doue  to  merit 
this  fate  ?  Why  had  I  children  whose  mere  living  in  my  house  is 
the  pretext  for  all  this  cruel  suffering  ?”  The  old  man,  in  a  true 
Christian  spirit,  replied,  “Peace,  agra,  the  Passion  and  Death 
of  Christ  was  more  than  this.”  Seeing  and  hearing  all  this,  the 
priest’s  heai't  was  wrung  beyond  expression,  and  he  observed, 
“Good  God!  and  this  is  the  work  of  a  bishop!”  The  sheriff  at 
once  threatened  to  have  him  removed.  The  priest  invited  him  to 
make  the  experiment.  He  did  not  attempt  to  carry  out  his 
threat,  but  sent  forthwith  for  the  military.  It  is,  perhaps,  well 
both  for  sheriff  and  priest  that  the  uncalled-for  threat  was  not 
attempted  to  be  carried  into  execution.  The  priest  at  the  same 
time  told  the  people  “  Be  quiet,  and  leave  all  to  God” 

The  crime  of  this  man  was  that  he  had  his  daughter  living  with 
him.  Some  time  ago,  Holmes  the  bailiff  came  to  demand  the 
infant  child  of  this  daughter  to  the  school.  She  replied,  “Oh! 
take  the  cradle  and  all.”  So  the  cradle  was  taken,  not  to  the 
school  but  to  the  dunghill. 

7.  Cavanagh  is  houseless  ;  and  next  comes  the  turn  of  old 
Widow  Lally.  Last  night  her  son  returned  from  England  with 
the  rent  of  the  land  which  to-day  ceases  to  be  hers.  Her 
daughter  is  distracted.  Herself  seems  to  have  lost  her  reason. 
Her  neighbors  increase  the  horror  of  the  scene  by  cries  and 
lamentations.  But  in  vain.  The  sheriff  comes  ;  she  and  her 
graceful  daughter  are  dragged  out  of  the  house ;  the  crowbar  is 
applied  in  the  proper  place,  and  all  is  ruins. 

8.  Next  comes  the  case  of  the  two  widow  cottiers,  one  of  whom 
lived  unmolested  in  her  cabin  thirty -three  years. 

9.  The  sheelings  are  torn  down.  The  owner  of  one  is  already 
the  inmate  of  a  mad-house,  perhaps  from  the  excitement  induced 
by  the  prospect  of  the  eviction. 

10.  Old  Michael  Heuaghan  comes  next.  He  neither  injured, 
or  murdered,  or  conspired,  or  outraged,  but  he  burned  bog,  and 
stopped  doing  so  the  moment  he  was  ordered.  His  daughter 
refused  going  to  the  school  at  the  bidding  of  the  lady,  and,  amid 
the  pelting  storm,  he  and  his  wife  and  five  children  are  evicted. 
One  of  his  sons  would  foolishly  stick  to  his  house.  But  Murphy 
and  his  ten  or  fourteen  from  Church- street,  aided  by  bailiff  and 
police,  soon  teach  him  the  benefit  of  resistance.  He  is  dragged 
half  strangled  out  of  the  house,  which  in  a  few  minutes  more  is  a 
heap  of  ruins. 

11.  Off  again  with  the  “brigade”  to  the  house  of  James 


528 


APPENDIX. 


Henaghan.  He,  it  was  alleged,  assaulted  a  “Scripture-reader.” 
He,  his  wife,  and  children,  are  flung  out — down  came  the  gable 
and  roof,  and  the  pregnant  woman  passes  the  terrific  night  of  rain 
and  sleet  with  no  covering  but  the  canopy  of  heaven  ! 

12.  Lastly  comes  Patt  Murray.  Patt’s  son  loved  his  mother  as 
good  sons  ought.  The  Scripture-readers,  Donnelly  and  Manion, 
came  one  day  to  Patt’s  house,  and,  as  usual,  began  to  “  read  the 
word  ”  for  the  simple  mother.  Perceiving  a  scapular  on  her 
bosom,  Donnelly  sprang  up,  rushed  upon  her,  and  thought  to  seize 
the  emblem  of  superstition,  calling  it  “a  dirty  rag  that  ought  to 

be  cast  into  the  fire,  and  put  on  by  the  d - l1”  (myself).  The 

poor  woman  resented  the  outrage,  seized  a  candlestick,  and  made 
the  intruders  fly.  Her  son  went  farther,  and  gave  them  a  few 
knocks.  For  this  he  spent  two  months  in  gaol — and  for  this  is 
the  old  couple  now  flung  adrift  on  the  world. 

Such  were  the  Partly  evictions  in  their  origin  and  circumstances. 
Never,  perhaps,  before  were  witnessed  scenes  of  the  kind  more 
heart-rending.  I  pray  God  that  such  may  never  again  be  witnessed 
in  Ireland.  In  any  man  they  would  be  cruel ,  but  in  a  “bishop  ” 
they  are,  as  the  Times  calls  them,  “  a  hideous  scandal .” 

Lord  Plunket  failed  in  his  cherished  attempt  to  proselytize 
wholesale  his  unfortunate  tenants.  He  has  selected  the  victims  of 
his  disappointment.  Old  age,  youth,  infancy,  widowhood,  orphan¬ 
age,  innocence,  have  all  fallen  under  his  revenge.  Let  us  hope 
that  his  terrible  example  will  be  a  lesson  of  Christian  tolerance 
and  charity  to  others  of  his  kind. 

They,  with  their  families,  made  in  all  sixty -eight  human  beings, 
flung  adrift  in  two  days  on  the  world’s  waste,  the  victims  of  in¬ 
tolerance  and  fanaticism.  Next  day  was  spent  in  evicting  the 
brute  beasts ,  in  driving  the  cattle  off  the  mountain  and  lands  ; 
and  thus  ended  the  three  memorable  days  in  Partry,  21st,  22nd, 
and  23rd  November,  1860 — Bishop  Plunket  landlord,  and  Victoria 
Queen  of  England — Garibaldi  fighting  for  liberty  in  Italy,  and  a 
Protestant  bishop  driving  Papist  tenants  out  of  their  houses  for 
their  faith’s  sake  in  Catholic  Ireland,  under  the  free  and  “glo¬ 
rious  English  constitution”!  !  ! 

LIST  OF  TENANTS  LATELY  EVICTED. 


Ned  Joyce, 

Patt  Lally, 

Tom  Lally, 

Ned  Mara, 

N.B. — He  left  the  house  that 
his  father’s  head. 

John  Boyle, 

Martin  Lally,  . 

Michael  Cavanagh, 

Patt  Murray, 

James  Henaghan, 

Widow"  Lally, 

Michael  Henaghan, 

ET  And  the  Two  Widows, 


6  in  family,  land  striped. 

4  in  family,  do. 

4  in  family,  do. 

5  in  family,  do. 

it  might  not  be  thrown  down  on 

8  in  family,  land  striped. 

10  in  family,  do. 

7  in  family,  do. 

5  in  family,  *  do. 

5  in  family,  do. 

4  in  family,  do. 

7  in  family,  — 

3  in  family,  — 


APPENDIX.  529 

In  all  sixty- eight  souls,  the  greater  part  of  whom  are  roving  about 
ever  since  in  search  of  a  place  to  shelter  them  at  night. 

All  these  tenants  were  duly  served  with  a  printed  notice  of  the 
bishop's  “  earnest  desire  "  to  send  their  children  to  the  proselytizing 
schools.  They  never  heeded  it  before  or  after.  They  have  been 
always  steadfast,  and  they  have  now  paid  the  penalty. 

Martin  Lally  constantly  refused  sending  his  youngest  child  to 
school,  telling  Holmes  the  bailiff  lies  about  the  boy’s  age,  as 
though  he  were  too  young. 

John  Boyle  acted  a  similar  part,  making  one  daughter  imperso¬ 
nate  another,  and  thus  getting  Holmes  not  to  serve  the  “  notice 
to  quit,”  which  he  said  lie  had  in  his  pocket. 

Michael  Cavanagh’s  daughter  told  the  same  Holmes  to  “take 
cradle  andall,"  the  child  being  so  young. 

Michael  Henaghan’s  daughter  insisted  on  Miss  Plunket  (Mary) 
that  she  (the  daughter)  was  beyond  the  years  of  learning.  The 
parents  made  off  from  the  colloquy. 

Patt  Lally  spurned  Crump  the  Scripture-reader,  when  the 
latter  would  fain  prove  to  him,  twelve  months  ago,  the  ‘  ‘  abomi¬ 
nations  of  Popery.”  The  Scripture-reader  then  warned  him  that 
for  his  (Lally’ s)  obstinacy  he  would  be  glad,  before  twelve  months, 
to  beg  Crump’s  pardon. 

Patt  Murray’s  wife  and  son  resented  the  outrage  of  another 
Bible-reader,  Donnelly,  who  thought  to  seize  her  scapular  and 
fling  it  into  the  fire.  Lord  Plunket  avows  that  they  are  evicted 
for  molesting  the  Scripture-reader  on  this  occasion. 

James  Henaghan,  ditto. 

Thus  the  refusal  to  meet  the  “  earnest  desire,”  with  the  oppo¬ 
sition  to  the  personal  demands  of  the  bailiffs,  ladies,  Scripture- 
readers,  etc.,  has  met  with  its  full  retribution  in  the  ruin  of  the 
unfortunate  victims. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Lord  Plunket  has,  within  the 
last  few  years,  rooted  out  all  the  tenants  of  Gortfree  and  Gor- 
teenmore,  the  two  nearest  villages  to  the  Catholic  church,  so  that 
there  is  not  a  single  Catholic  tenant  now  within  about  an  English 
mile  of  that  church  but  one,  Thomas  Sheridan,  and  he  is  “  noticed 
to  quit.”  A  man  of  the  name  of  Staunton  had  to  yield  up  posses¬ 
sion  two  years  ago?  but  having  left  his  child  at  school  when  all 
the  others  withdrew  them,  he  has  been  undisturbed  ever  since, 
and  got  promises  of  land  when  the  othei’s  would  be  evicted.  Not 
alone  “left  undisturbed,”  but  supplied  with  plenty  of  tillage 
land  and  the  grass  of  a  couple  of  cows.  Such  is  the  price  of  his 
own  conscience  and  his  child’s  faith. 

I  now  leave  it  to  the  breast  of  every  honest  man  in  this  empire — 
would  the  unfortunate  victims  lately  driven  from  their  homes  be 
this  day  without,  a  roof  to  shelter  them,  had  they,  too,  become  “ con¬ 
verts ,”  according  to  the  fashion  of  Bishop  Plunket  ? 

Public  opinion  has  already  pronounced  its  decided  voice  against 
him.  Only  three  papers  in  the  empire  dared  to  say  a  word  in  his 
defence,  and  they  in  doing  so  seemed  rather  to  revel  in  the  misery 

2  L 


530 


APPENDIX. 


inflicted  by  him,  tm  to  defend  him  on  any  principle  of  justice  or 
humanity.  In  fact,  they  speak  with  absolute  jocularity  of  the 
whole  business.  These  are  the  Express,  the  Irish  Times,  and  the 
Mayo  Constitution.  Such,  then,  were  the  evictions  in  themselves 
and  in  their  real  origin. 

As  to  the  pretences  put  forward  to  justify  them,  they  are  at 
once  so  silly,  so  flagrant,  and  so  self -contradictory,  that  they  at 
once  destroy  themselves,  and  convict  their  author. 

Thus,  1st. — “Striping  the  land”  was  put  forward  both  in 
Lord  Plunket’s  notice  conveying  his  “earnest  desire”  to  the 
tenantry,  and  in  his  attorney  Mr.  Martin’s  letter,  as  the  ground 
of  proceeding. 

2nd. — That  was  abandoned  lately,  and  a  new  set  of  pretexts 
formed  under  sign  manual  of  his  lordship,  in  which  there  is  not  a 
word  about  striping.  Let  me  subjoin  his  own  -words  : — 

“  To  the  Editor  of  the  Freeman. 

“Palace,  Tuam,  20th  October,  1860. 

* {  Sik, — I  have  observed  in  your  paper  of  this  morning  a 
reference  to  certain  evictions  which  are  about  to  take  place  on  my 
property,  and  with  respect  to  which  I  am  charged  by  your  cor¬ 
respondent  with  “a  breach  of  faith.”  I  feel  that  I  cannot  better 
answer  this  unfounded  charge  than  by  requesting  that  you  will 
publish  in  your  paper,  in  its  entirety,  together  with  my  letter,  the 
accompanying  extract  from  a  pamphlet  which  has  just  been 
published  in  reference  to  this  very  matter,  by  a  gentleman  with 
whom  I  have  no  personal  acquaintance.  For  the  truth  of  the 
facts  contained  in  this  extract,  I  myself  am  ready  to  vouch,  and 
am  willing  to  appeal  to  my  agent,  solicitor,  and  counsel  for  their 
confirmation  of  its  correctness.  In  conclusion,  I  take  this  op¬ 
portunity  of  stating,  once  for  all,  that  none  of  the  evictions  which 
are  about  to  take  place  are  connected  in  any  way  with  the 
question  of  religion,  and  that,  having  made  this  statement,  I  de¬ 
cline  taking  any  notice  of  any  further  misrepresentations  which 
may  appear  hereafter  on  this  subject. 

“  I  remain,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

“  Plunket. 

Names  of  the  tenants  who  are  to  be  dispossessed  on  the  1st  of 
November ,  together  with  the  reasons  for  evicting  them. 

“  ‘  1.  Martin  Lally. — This  man  burned  his  land,  contrary  to  the 
rules  of  the  estate,  of  which  he  had  been  served  with  a  copy; 
and  when  the  surveyor  went  to  measure  the  land  which  had  been 
so  burned,  his  sons  interfered  with  him,  and  threw  his  chain  over 
the  ditch.  One  of  his  sons  was  convicted  of  assaulting  the 
Scripture-readers ;  another  is  now  waiting  trial  -on  the  charge  of 
murdering  Harrison; 

“  ‘2.  John  Boyle. — This  man  also  burned  his  land,  contrary  to 
rule,  and  when  brought  before  the  magistrates  for  doing  so,  he 


APPENDIX. 


531 


vexatiously  summoned  Lord  Plunket  to  attend  at  the  Ballinrobe 
petty  sessions  as  a  witness  in  his  defence.  His  son  was  caught 
herding  fifteen  head  of  cattle  on  his  lordship’s  grass,  and  was  en- 

faged  with  the  priest  in  carting  away  the  stones  of  Miss  Plunket’s 
ouse. 

‘“3.  Michael  Whelan  has  two  holdings,  on  one  of  which,  con¬ 
trary  to  rule,  he  has  placed  a  sub-tenant,  who  was  convicted  of  an 
assault  on  two  Scripture-readers. 

“  ‘  4.  Edward  Joyce  burned  his  land,  and  vexatiously  summoned 
his  lordship  as  a  witness  for  his  defence.  He  was  tried  on  a  gross 
charge  of  perjury  at  the  last  assizes,  but  the  jury  having  disagreed, 
he  is  now  awaiting  further  trial. 

“  ‘  5.  Thomas  Lally  burned  his  land,  and  summoned  his  lordship 
as  a  witness. 

“  ‘  6.  Michael  Henehan. — Same  as  last. 

“  ‘  7.  Mary  Lally. — Same  as  last. 

“  ‘  8.  Sally  Lally,  ) 

“  ‘  9.  Margaret  Duffy,  >  Squatters. 

“  ‘10.  Martin  Lally,  ) 

*“11.  Patt  Murray  was  convicted  of  assaulting  the  Scripture 
readers. 

‘  “  12.  John  Prendergast. — His  son  assisted  the  priest  with  horse 
and  cart  in  removing  the  stones  of  Miss  Plunket’s  house. 

“  ‘  13.  Michael  Gavanagh  assaulted  one  of  the  Scripture -readers, 
and,  contrary  to  the  rules  of  the  estate,  has  his  son-in-law  living 
with  him. 

“  ‘  14.  Patt  Lally  {John)  burned  his  lands,  and  summoned  his 
lordship  as  a  witness.’  ” 

Let  Lord  Plunket  now  have  his  choice.  He  put  forward  false 
reasons,  and  therefore  stated  what  was  not  true,  either  when  he 
pretended  the  STRIPING  in  his  own  “rules,"  or  by  the  pen  of 
his  attorney,  Mr.  Martin,  twelve  months  ago,  or  now,  when  under 
his  own  hand  he  assigns  different  reasons.  But,  to  verify  the 
saying,  “  Mentita  est  iniquitas  est  sibi ,”  his  agent  came  out  a  few 
days  ago  with  an  entirely  different  set  of  reasons,  which  I  beg  to 
furnish : —  , 


“  To  the  Editor  of  the  Times. 

“  Sir, — As  the  agent  of  Lord  Plunket,  my  attention  has  been 
directed  to  an  article  which  appeared  in  the  Times  of  the  27th 
inst.,  in  which  his  lordship  is  severely  criticized  for  evicting  certain 
tenants  from  his  estate,  and  also  for  evicting  them  at  so  inclement 
a  season  of  the  year  as  this  present  month  of  October. 

“The  writer  of  the  article  in  question  has  entirely  misunder¬ 
stood  the  reasons  which  compelled  Lord  Plunket  to  adopt  this 
course.  It  was  not  to  recover  rents,  or  because  they  were  default¬ 
ers  they  were  evicted,  but  because  they  had  formed  a  lawless  com¬ 
bination  against  the  landlord  and  others  of  the  tenants,  and  because 


532 


APPENDIX. 


they  were  indentified  with  a  system  of  outrage,  conspiracy,  incen¬ 
diarism,  perjury,  and  murder,  that  Lord  Plunket  was  driveu,  in 
justice  to  the  peaceable  and  well-disposed  tenants,  and  for  their 
protection,  to  evict  those  parties  off  his  property.”* 

Here  is  a  new  discovery  of  reasons,  quite  distinct  from  striping, 
burning,  lending  carts,  having  one’s  daughter  living  with  one, 
etc.;  and,  in  reference  to  them,  the  Times  justly  says  : — 

“Outrage,  conspiracy,  incendiarism,  perjury,  murder,  are  crimes 
punishable  by  the  common  law  ;  and  if  his  tenantry  have  com¬ 
mitted  these,  Lord  Plunket  should  prosecute  them  to  conviction ; 
but  his  agent  can  scarcely  mean  that  all — the  old  men,  women, 
and  children — are  equally  guilty  ;  and  yet  Lord  Plunket  applies 
to  all  alike  a  punishment  which  is  as  much  too  severe  for  the  in¬ 
nocent  as  it  is  insufficient  for  the  guilty.” 

Such  is  the  Times ’  appreciation  of  this  third  set  of  reasons, 
which  are  the  grossest  calumnies  on  the  poor  creatures  evicted, 
and  for  which,  I  apprehend,  the  writer  will  soon  have  to  account 
before  a  judge  and  jury.  I  now,  before  the  world,  challenge  Mr. 
Faulkner  to  name  a  single  tenant  guilty  of  ‘  ‘  conspiracy,  incen¬ 
diarism,  murder,  or  perjury.”  Yet,  he  charges  every  one  of 
the  unfortunate  people  as  guilty  of  them  all.  Was  ever  the 
effrontery  of  assertion  carried  further  ?  Take  poor  old  Michael 
Cavanagh,  eighty  years  of  age, — whom  did  he  outrage,  murder, 
conspire  against  ?  Take  old  Widow  Lally, — when  did  she  return 
from  beyond  the  seas  for  calling  God  to  false  witness,  or  get  the 
royal  reprief  for  the  murder  of  her  kind  ?  How  daring  !  how  im¬ 
pudent  !  But  enough  :  his  own  contradictions  and  those  of  his 
master  carry  with  them  the  sentence  which  every  truthful  man 
must  pronounce  against  them,  and  that  is  conveyed  in  one  word 
— and  that  1  shall  not  write. 

This,  perhaps,  may  be  regarded  as  very  strong.  But  really,  in 
the  face  of  such  glaring  contradictions,  I  think  nothing  less  can 
designate  the  pretexts.  Contrary  statements  may  be  all  false. 
They  cannot  he  all  true  ;  and  when  the  same  man  commits  himself 
to  such  statements,  he  must  abide  the  judgment  which  reason  and 
truth  ever  pronounce  upon  them. 

Protestant  opinion  has,  I  am  happy  to  say,  already  pronounced 
itself  on  this  sad  subject.  Journals  whose  politics  are  as  poles 
asunder,  have  proclaimed  the  same  judgment.  The  Times ,  that 
these  evictions  are  “a  hideous  scandal that  they  remind  “of  a 
closed  drain  or  some  such  nuisance that  the  bishop  had  rather 
“  sit  down  and  die,  or  throw  himself  on  the  charity  of  his  diocese, 
than  be  guilty  of  them  that  from  him  ‘  ‘  at  least "  was  to  be  ex¬ 
pected  “  an  open  palm  and  a  gentle  pressure,  not  a  heave  at  the 
pick-axe  and  crowbar,  and  the  crumbling  of  walls  and  thatch  from 
which  some  old  couple  escape  into  the  waste  around.” 

*  The  agent  had  to  make  an  abject  apology,  and  pay  a  couple  of  hundred  pounds 
costs,  for  this  libel. 


APPENDIX. 


533 


Thus  the  Times  (4th  Dec.,  I860).  May  I  now  be  permitted  to 
insert  in  full  the  following  from  Reynolds's  Newspaper,  which  in 
things  religious  and  political  has  not  much  in  common  with  the 
Times ,  but  which  boldly  and  honestly,  though  stronger  than  I 
would  myself,  speaks  out  its  opinion  about  this  “  bishop  burglar .” 

“A  BISHOP  BURGLAR. 

“  To  the  Editor  of  Reynolds's  Newspaper. 

“  Sir, — This  is  rather  an  ngly  heading  for  a  letter.  But  for 
this,  the  blame  must  rest  on  the  shoulders  of  the  ‘  right  reverend 
father  in  God  ’  who  has  done,  through  his  tools,  the  deed  com¬ 
monly  known  by  the  above  designation.  Burglary  is  generally 
understood  to  mean  the  violent  breaking  of  a  dwelling-house, 
against  the  consent,  and  to  the  peril  and  injury  of  the  inmates. 
The  implements  of  the  common  burglar  are  a  mask,  a  dark  lantern, 
and  a  crowbar.  The  right  reverend  housebreaker  to  whom  I  now 
refer,  having  obtained  the  sanction  of  the  law  for  the  perpetration 
of  his  burglary,  is  in  a  condition  to  dispense  with  the  mask  ;  and 
the  deeds  of  violence  being  done  in  the  broad  daylight,  it  is  obvious 
that  he  has  no  occasion  for  the  lantern.  But  the  crowbar  would 
appear  to  be  as  essential  to  Bishop  Plunket  as  to  Bill  Sykes.  So, 
at  least,  the  Irish  newspapers — who  have  published  to  the  world 
the  existence  and  achievements  of  their  consecrated  and  apostolic 
housebreaker — inform  us.  From  one  of  those  reports  I  transcribe 
a  few  sentences  : — 

“  ‘Partry,  Tuam,  Nov.  21. 

“  ‘While  I  write,  the  sound  of  Bishop  Plunk et’s  crowbar  rings 
in  my  ears.  Three  houses  have  already  fallen,  and  the  house  of 
John  Boyle  is  this  moment  coming  down  with  a  crash.  It  would 
wring  the  heart  of  the  veriest  pagan,  the  sight  presented  at  this 
moment— just  ten  minutes  before  a  beautiful  house,  now  a  mass  of 
ruins.  One  man  made  an  attempt  at  resistance,  but,  of  course, 
in  vain.  He  and  his  wife  were  dragged  like  beasts  out  of  their 
neat  and  comfortable  house,  the  abode  of  their  fathers  for  several 
generations.’ 

“  Bishop  Plunk  et’s  pretext  for  these  outrages  on  humanity  is  as 
ridiculous  as  his  doings  are  inexcusable.  Some  of  the  poor  people 
are  alleged  to  have  assaulted  the  ‘  Scripture-readers.  ’  These 
fellows  are  known  in  Ireland  as  ‘soupers,’  because  by  means  of 
soup  tickets  they  endeavor  to  bribe  the  poor  Irish  into  Protest¬ 
antism.  .Now,  if  any  man  deserve  to  be  assaulted  and  kicked  out 
of  one’s  house,  it  is  the  sanctimonious  recruiting-sergeant,  who 
attempts  to  make  converts  to  his  creed  by  appealing  to  the  bellies 
of  the  needy  and  hungry  people.  This  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
Irish  *  father  in  God  ’  suggests  the  question — from  which  of  the 


534 


APPENDIX. 


twelve  apostles  does  lie  trace  liis  descent  ?  Is  it  from  any  of  the 
eleven  who  went  about  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  world,  with¬ 
out  money  and  without  price,  and  laboring  for  their  daily  bread 
with  their  own  hands,  lest  they  should  be  a  burden  to  any  one  ? 
Or  does  Bishop  Plunket’s  spiritual  genealogy  mount  up  to,  and 
originate  in,  that  twelfth  apostle,  whose  chief  distinction  was  that 
he  delighted  in  filling  and  carrying  the  bag  ?  Be  this,  however,  as 
it  may,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  conduct  in  this  matter  of 
the  breaking  and  levelling  of  the  houses  of  the  poor  Irish  peasan¬ 
try,  is  calculated  to  fill  the  breast  of  every  well-wisher  of  the 
Christian,  and  especially  the  Protestant  form  of,  religion  with  the 
most  serious  and  gloomy  forebodings.  If  all  the  bishops  acted  like 
this  one,  we  should  be  perfectly  justified  in  arriving  at  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  their  chief  end  and  object  was  to  make  Christianity 
stink  in  the  nostrils  of  every  humane  and  upright  person,  and 
abolish  the  religion  of  the  Cross  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Indeed,  it  has  long  since  been  surmised  that  the  object  of  those 
who  first  established  Christianity  by  means  of  governmental  pro¬ 
tection  and  legal  pains  and  penalties,  was  to  deprive  it  of  its 
heavenly  characteristics,  make  it  unfit  for  the  social  and  moral 
amelioration  of  the  degraded  and  miserable  masses,  and  render  its 
professed  teachers  the  tools  and  accomplices  of  the  crowned  and 
coroneted  plunderers,  torturers,  and  enslavers  of  the  working 
classes.  Dean  Swift,  with  a  most  profound  and  accurate  estimate 
of  human  nature,  declared  that  the  surest  and  speediest  method 
for  abolishing  Homan  Catholicism  in  Ireland,  would  be  for  the 
government  to  make  it  the  established  religion,  and  thus  enable 
the  priest  to  maintain  his  pretension  by  the  aid  of  the  baton  of  the 
constable  and  the  bayonet  of  the  soldier,  and  appropriate  every 
tenth  pig  by  the  authority  of  ‘  ‘  queen,  lords,  and  commons.  ” 
The  sagacious  dean  reasoned  that  the  disgust  inspired  by  this 
coercive  sustenance  of  the  clergy  would  have  the  effect  of  alienat¬ 
ing  the  people  from  the  state  religion,  and  converting  them  to 
some  other  mode  of  worship.  Dean  Swift  reasons  from  experience. 
He  saw  and  felt  that  Protestantism — because  it  was  the  religion 
of  the  state — because  all  the  physical  pains  and  penalties,  terrors 
and  tortures,  at  the  disposal  of  a  powerful  and  an  alien  govern¬ 
ment,  were  employed  to  uphold  it — was  made  utterly  abhorrent 
to  the  people.  He  therefore  drew  the  conclusion  that  the  same 
diabolical  means  which  had  rendered  Protestantism  a  stench,  a 
pestilence,  and  a  curse  to  the  country,  would  be  equally  successful 
in  bringing  any  other  form  of  faith  into  the  same  degree  of  min¬ 
gled  detestation  and  scorn. 


•  •  •  •  •  •  • 

“  Not  so  with  the  modern  bishops.  To  the  avai'ice  of  the  feudal 
prelates  they  add  the  cowardice  of  civilized  Sybarites.  They  are 
violent  by  proxy.  They  rob  the  widow,  and  plunder  the  orphan 
by  crowbarred  bum-bailiffs  and  cutlassed  constables.  They 


APPENDIX. 


535 


break  and  level  the  houses  of  the  poor  and  the  helpless  under  the 
sanction  of  a  mammon-made  parliament.  Under  pretence  of 
serving  God,  they  do  the  vilest  service  of  Satan.  Under  pretence 
of  preaching  Christ,  they  rob  and  starve  those  for  whom,  on  their 
own  showing,  Christ  lived  and  died.  It  is  high  time  that  these 
ferocious  and  cowardly  prelates  of  the  Pluuket  species  should  be 
deprived  of  the  power  which  enables  them  to  perpetuate  their 
atrocities.  The  Irish  Established  Church  is  a  disgrace  to  the 
British  nation,  a  scandal  and  insult  to  true  religion.  Nor  are  its 
prelates  of  the  Lord  Pluuket  species  likely  to  increase  its  popu¬ 
larity  or  usefulness  by  making  their  authority  as  landlords  an 
instrument  for  religious  persecution.  King  Bomba  of  Naples  was 
not  more  the  enemy  of  the  human  race  than  some  of  the  Irish 
landlords.  The  Irish,  poor  devils  !  are  taught  to  detest  Garibaldi, 
but  they  have  as  great  a  need  of  him,  or  one  like  him,  to  rid  them 
of  the  twofold  vampyrism  of  plundering  prelates  and  absentee 
landlords,  as  the  late  Bourbon-robbed  natives  of  the  Two 
Sicilies. 

“  Northumbrian.” 

# 

I  might  here  fill  a  volume  with  extracts  of  a  similar  nature. 
But  let  the  act  speak  for  itself  and  for  the  “bishop.” 

I  have  now  done,  and  I  trust  the  fair  and  impartial  statement 
of  this  case  before  the  English  public  will  have  the  desired 
effect  of,  in  future,  preventing  such  terrible  scenes.  Englishmen 
would  not  tolerate  such  work  in  England.  The  Welsh  lady  who, 
a  month  ago,  attempted  to  coerce  her  tenantry  into  “supporting 
the  Established  Church,”  was  soon  made  to  feel  that  the  attempt 
would  only  recoil  on  herself.  Let  the  poor  Irish  tenant  be  treated 
with  equal  consideration.  He  has  a  soul  and  conscience.  He 
loves  his  children  and  he  loves  his  faith.  In  this  country,  which 
has  a  “free  constitution,”  will  he  not  be  allowed  to  bring  up  those 
children  in  that  faith  ?  or  will  it  be  left  in  the  power  of  the  land¬ 
lord  to  give  such  practical  effect  to  his  earnest  desire  for  prosely¬ 
tizing  the  youth  on  his  property,  as  I  have  shown  Bishop 
Plunket  to  have  given  in  the  mountains  of  Partry  ? 

,  Your  faithful  servant, 

Patrick  Lavelle. 


536 


APPENDIX. 


POPULATION  AND  TENUEE. 


The  following  remarks  of  Mr.  Thornton  are  well  worthy  of  repro¬ 
duction  : — 

“A  nation,”  writes  he,  “may  be  pre-eminent  in  power  and 
grandeur,  and  equally  distinguished  in  the  arts  of  war  and  peace ; 
native  industry  and  foreign  commerce  may  supply  in  abundance 
every  requisite  for  ease  and  luxury  ;  and  to  these  solid  materials 
of  enjoyment  may  be  superadded  all  the  resources  of  literature  and 
science  :  still,  if  these  advantages  contribute  only  to  the  happiness 
of  a  few,  while  the  many  are  sunk  in  bodily  and  mental  destitu¬ 
tion,  the  lot  of  such  a  people  is  anything  but  an  enviable  one. 
With  all  their  civilization  and  refinement,  their  condition  would 
not  be  ill  exchanged  for  that  of  the  rudest  horde  of  wandering 
Tartars,  whose  numbers  are  better  proportioned  to  their  means  of 
subsistence.  The  balance  of  happiness  is  apparently  in  favor  of 

the  latter . -If  the  majority  are  wretched,  no  other  epithet 

can  properly  be  applied  to  the  whole  body.”* 

“The  evil  from  which  Ireland  is  suffering  is  not,  properly 
speaking,  scarcity  of  food.  Quite  enough  is  annually  produced  for 
the  comfortable  maintenance  of  all  the  inhabitants  ;  but  the  mis¬ 
fortune  is  that  most  of  the  latter  are  too  poor  to  buy  what  they 
require,  and  their  share  is  consequently  sent  abroad.  If  an 
increase  of  produce  were  to  take  place,  unaccompanied  by  an 
augmentation  of  the  earnings  of  the  working  class,  the  principal 
effect  would  be  that  a  larger  quantity  would  become  available  for 
exportation . 

‘  ‘  Besides,  it  is  not  precisely  an  extension  of  the  field  employment 
that  is  most  needed.  Large  as  the  number  of  agricultural  families 
in  Ireland  may  appear,  it  is  not  so  great  but  that  all  might  be  fully 
occupied  upon  the  land  actually  under  cultivation,  which,  if  equally 
divided  among  them,  would  allow,  at  least,  fourteen  acres  to  each. 

“Fourteen  acres  are  certainly  quite  enough  for  one  family  to 
manage,  and  one-third  of  the  quantity  would  enable  a  family  to 
live  comfortably,  and  to  pay  an  ample  rent  beside.” 

And  he  then  thus  explains  the  radical  cause  of  Irish  rural 
wretchedness  : — 

“It  is  not  want  of  space-,  then,  that  prevents  the  whole  of  the 
peasantry  from  being  comfortably  provided  for— the  true  cause  is 


*  Thornton  on  “Over-population,”  pp.  4-5. 


APPENDIX. 


537 


tlie  defectiveness  of  tlie  tenure  by  which  land  is  held.  The 
greater  part  of  the  tenants  are  tenants-at-will.  Uncertainty  of 
possession  and  exorbitant  rents  cramp  the  cottier’s  energy,  and 
rob  him  of  his  needful  subsistence  ;  and  the  former  cause  prevents 
the  larger  holder  also  from  making  improvements  and  from 
employing  the  labor  required  for  the  proper  cultivation  of  his 
farm.  Nothing  but  leases  on  moderate  conditions  is  requisite  to 
make  the  Irish  cottage  farmers  happy.  At  present  they  are  a 
most  miserable  race,  but  their  wretchedness  arises  from  their 
being  rackrented  tenants-at-will.”* 

“If  parliament  interfere  at  all,  it  should  do  so  in  a  manner 
likely  to  be  effectual — by  a  positive  prohibition,  for  instance,  of 
letting  the  land  except  on  a  lease.  Such  a  measure  might  be 
scarcely  warrantable  in  ordinary  circumstances,  but  the  state  of 
Ireland  is  too  critical  for  gentle  treatment,  and  where  the  salva¬ 
tion  of  a  whole  people  is  at  stake,  punctilious  deference  to  forms 
and  ceremonies  would  be  ridiculously  out  of  place.  The  un¬ 
certainty  of  the  tenure  of  land  is  the  grand  cause  of  the  disorders 
by  which  Ireland  is  afflicted ;  and  while  this  source  of  mischief 
is  left  unabated,  it  is  vain  to  hope  for  any  sensible  improvement. 
The  peasantry  are  quite  right  in  assuming  that  some  degree  of 
‘  fixity  of  tenure,’  as  they  call  it,  is  the  one  thing  needful  for 
them,  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  withhold  the  appropriate  remedy 
from  any  delicacy  for  the  sensitiveness  of  the  landlords.  Its 
application  would  be  the  reverse  of  injurious  to  this  class  of  men. 
The  only  compulsion  to  which  they  would  be  subject  would  be 
that  of  disposing  of  their  property  to  the  best  advantage  ;  and  if 
the  interference  implied  an  inability  on  their  part  to  manage  their 
own  affairs,  a  salve  for  the  iusult  would  be  found  in  the  growing 
value  of  their  estate.  A  far  more  violent  invasion  of  property 
established  the  reputation  of  one  of  the  most  celebrated  Grecian 
worthies.  When  the  Athenian  lawgiver  was  invited  to  compose 
the  strife  between  the  nobles  and  the  commonalty,  he  did  not 
stop  to  inquire  whether  the  burthens  of  the  latter  were  legally 
imposed  or  not.  He  merely  satisfied  himself  that  they  were  far 
too  heavy  to  be  borne,  and  then  proceeded  forthwith  to  lighten 
them,  and  his  ‘  disburthening  ordinance,’  which  gave  peace  to  his 
distracted  country,  has  procured  for  himself  the  applause  of  all 
succeeding  ages.  If  such  a  man  were  consulted  respecting  the 
state  of  Ireland,  he  would,  doubtless,  recommend  an  equally 
summary  course.  He  would  assume,  as  his  premises,  that  the 
people  must  live,  and  as  they  cannot  live  without  land,  he  would 
conclude  that  the  use  of  land  must  be  secured  to  them.  Unluckily 
Solon  is  not  archon  of  the  British  parliament.  ”+ 

In  reference  to  this  legislation  of  Solon,  I  am  tempted  to  furnish 
the  following  from  Dr.  Thirlwall’s  learned  History  of  Greece, 
though  it  might  have  been  more  appropriately  cited  in  the  pre¬ 
vious  remarks  about  Greece  : — 


*  Thornton  on  “  Over-population,”  pp.  419-20. 


f  Ibid. ,  498-9. 


538 


APPENDIX. 


“  The  government  had  long  been  in  the  hands  of  men  who  ap¬ 
pear  to  have  wielded  it  only  as  an  instrument  for  aggrandizing  and 
enriching  themselves. 

“  They  had  reduced  a  great  part  of  the  class  whose  industry  was 
employed  in  the  labors  of  agriculture  to  a  state  of  abject  depen¬ 
dence,  in  which  they  were  not  only  debarred  from  all,  but,  perhaps, 
a  merely  nominal  share  of,  political  rights,  but  held  even  their  per¬ 
sonal  freedom  by  a  precarious  tenure,  and  were  frequently  reduced 
to  slavery.  The  small  proprietors,  impoverished  by  bad  times  or 
casual  disasters,  were  compelled  to  borrow  money  at  high  interest, 
and  to  mortgage  their  lands  to  the  rich,  or  to  receive  them  again 
as  tenants  upon  the  same  hard  terms  as  were  imposed  upon  those 
who  cultivated  the  estates  of  the  great  landholders. 

‘  ‘  The  laws  made  by  the  nobles  enabled  the  creditor  to  seize  the 
person  of  his  insolvent  debtor,  and  to  sell  him  as  a  slave,  and  this 
right  had  been  frequently  exercised  :  numbers  had  been  tom  from 
their  homes,  and  condemned  to  end  their  days  in  the  service  of  a 
foreign  master ;  others  were  driven  to  the  still  harder  necessity  of 
selling  their  own  children.  One  who  travelled  at  this  time  through 
Attica,  saw  the  dismal  monuments  of  aristocratic  oppression  scat¬ 
tered  over  its  fields  in  the  stone  posts  ( opoi )  which  marked  that 
what  was  once  a  property  had  become  a  pledge,  and  that  its  former 
owner  had  lost  his  independence,  and  was  in  danger  of  sinking 
into  a  still  more  degraded  and  miserable  condition. 

‘ £  Such  spectacles  had  frequently  struck  the  eye  of  Solon,  and 
they  undoubtedly  moved  him  no  less  than  that  which  roused  the 
holy  indignation  of  the  elder  Gracchus  against  the  Roman  gran¬ 
dees. 

“Those  who  groaned  under  the  tyranny  were  only  eager  for  a 
change,  and  cared  little  about  the  means  by  which  it  might  be 
effected. 

‘  ‘  But  the  population  of  Attica  was  not  simply  composed  of  these 
two  classes. 

“We  have  already  noticed  an  ancient  geographical  division  of 
the  country,  which,  from  time  immemorial,  had  determined  the 
pursuits  and  the  character  of  its  inhabitants,  and  this  now  separated 
them  into  three  distinct  parties,  animated  each  by  its  peculiar  in¬ 
terests,  views,  and  feelings. 

‘  ‘  The  possessions  of  the  nobles  lay  chiefly  in  the  plains.  As  a 
body,  they  desired  the  continuance  of  the  existing  state  of  things, 
on  which  their  powrer  and  exclusive  privileges  depended.  But,  as 
we  have  seen,  there  were  among  them  some  moderate  men,  who 
wei'e  willing  to  make  concessions  to  prudence,  if  not  to  justice, 
and  to  resign  a  part  for  the  sake  of  securing  the  possession  of  the 
rest. 

“  The  inhabitants  of  the  highlands,  in  the  eastern  and  northern 
parts  of  Attca,  do  not  seem  to  have  suffered  any  of  those  evils 
which  the  rapacity  and  hard-heartedness  of  the  powerful  had  in¬ 
flicted  on  the  lowland  peasantry ;  but,  though  independent,  they 
were  probably,  for  the  most  part,  poor,  and  had,  pcrhajis,  been  less 


APPENDIX. 


539 


considered  than  their  neighbors  in  the  distribution  of  political 
rights. 

“They  generally  wished  for  a  revolution  which  would  place 
them  on  a  level  with  the  rich  ;  and,  uniting  their  cause  with  that 
of  the  oppressed,  they  called  for  a  thorough  redress  of  grievances, 
which,  they  contended,  could  only  be  afforded  by  reducing  that 
enormous  inequality  of  possessions,  which  was  the  source  of  degra¬ 
dation  and  misery  to  them  and  their  fellows.  The  men  of  the 
coast,  who,  probably,  composed  a  main  part  of  that  class  which 
subsisted  by  trade,  by  the  exercise  of  the  mechanical  arts,  and, 
perhaps,  by  the  working  of  the  mines,  and  now  included  a  con¬ 
siderable  share  of  affluence  and  intelligence,  were  averse  to  violent 
measures,  but  were  desirous  of  a  reform  in  the  constitution,  which 
should  promote  the  prosperity  of  the  country,  by  removing  all 
grounds  of  reasonable  complaint,  and  should  admit  a  larger  num¬ 
ber  to  the  enjoyment  of  those  rights  which  were  now  engrossed  and 
abused  by  a  few. 

“It  is  probable  that  the  wiser  nobles  now  regretted  the  blind 
eagerness  with  which  their  ancestors  abolished  the  regal  dignity, 
under  which  they  might  still,  perhaps,  have  retained  their  power, 
even  if  they  had  been  compelled  to  exercise  it  with  great  modera¬ 
tion. 

“  The  people  in  general  felt  the  need  of  a  leader,  and  would  have 
preferred  even  the  despotic  rule  of  one  man  to  the  tyranny  of  many 
lords.  As  Solon’s  established  reputation  pointed  him  out  the  person 
most  capable  of  remedying  the  disorders  of  the  state,  so  he  united 
all  the  qualities  which  could  fit  him  for  coming  forward  as  the 
protector  of  the  commonalty,  without  exciting  the  fears  of  the 
nobles. 

“His  task  consisted  of  two  main  parts.  The  first  and  most 
pressing  business  was  to  relieve  the  present  distress  of  the  com¬ 
monalty.  The  next  to  provide  against  the  recurrence  of  like  evils, 
by  regulating  the  rights  of  all  the  citizens  according  to  equitable 
principles,  and  fixing  them  on  a  permanent  basis.  In  proceeding 
to  the  first  part  of  his  undertaking,  Solon  held  a  middle  course  be¬ 
tween  the  two  extremes — those  who  wished  to  keep  all,  and 
those  who  were  for  taking  everything  away.  The  most  violent  or 
needy  would  have  been  satisfied  with  nothing  short  of  a  total  con¬ 
fusion  of  property,  followed  by  a  fresh  distribution  of  it. 

“  They  desired  that  all  debts  should  be  cancelled,  and  that  the 
lands  of  the  rich  should  be  confiscated  and  parcelled  out  among  the 
poor.  Solon,  while  he  resisted  these  reckless  and  extravagant  de¬ 
mands,  met  the  reasonable  expectations  of  the  public  by  his 
disburtliening  ordinance  ( Eeio-a'xOela ),  and  relieved  the  debtor, 
partly  by  a  reduction  of  the  rate  of  interest,  which  was  probably 
made  retrospective,  and  thus,  in  many  cases,  would  wipe  off  a 
great  part  of  the  debt ;  and  partly  by  lowering  the  standard  of 
the  silver  coinage,  so  that  the  debtor  saved  more  than  one-fourth 
in  every  payment.  Plutarch  (sol.  15)  says  he  made  mina  to  contain 
100  drachma  instead  of  73.  He  likewise  released  the  pledged 


540 


APPENDIX. 


lands  from  their  incumbrances,  and  restored  them  in  full  property 
to  their  owners ;  though  it  does  not  seem  certain  whether  this  was 
one  of  the  express  objects  of  the  measure,  or  only  one  of  the  conse¬ 
quences  which  it  involved.  Finally,  he  abolished  the  inhuman  law 
which  enabled  the  creditor  to  enslave  his  debtor,  and  restored  those 
who  were  pining  at  home  in  such  bondage  to  immediate  liberty, 
and  it  would  seem  that  he  compelled  those  who  had  sold  their 
debtors  into  foreign  countries  to  procure  their  freedom  at  their 
own  expense.  The  debt  itself  in  such  cases  was,  of  course,  held 
to  be  extinguished.  Solon  himself,  in  a  poem  which  he  afterwards 
composed  on  the  subject  of  his  legislation,  spoke  with  a  becoming 
pride  of  the  happy  change  which  this  measure  had  wrought  in  the 
face  of  Attica,  of  the  numerous  citizens  whose  lands  he  had  dis¬ 
charged,  and  whose  persons  he  had  emancipated  and  brought  back 
from  hopeless  slavery  in  strange  lands. 

“  He  was  only  unfortunate  in  bestowing  his  confidence  on  persons 
who  were  incapable  of  imitating  his  virtue,  and  who  abused  his 
intimacy.  At  the  time  when  all  men  were  uncertain  as  to  his 
intentions,  and  no  kind  of  property  could  be  thought  secure,  he 
privately  informed  three  of  his  friends  of  his  determination  not  to 
touch  the.estates  of  the  land-owners,  but  only  to  reduce  the  amount 
of  debt. 

“  He  had  afterwards  the  vexation  of  discovering  that  the  men 
to  whom  he  had  intrusted  the  secret  had  been  base  .enough  to 
take  advantage  of  it,  by  making  large  purchases  of  land,  which  at 
such  a  juncture  bore  no  doubt  a  very  low  price,  with  borrowed 
money.  Fortunately  for  his  fame,  the  state  of  his  private  affairs 
was  such  as  to  exempt  him  from  all  suspicion  of  having  had  any 
share  in  this  sordid  transaction. 

“  He  had  himself  a  considerable  sum  out  at  interest,  and  was  a 
loser  in  proportion  by  his  own  enactments.”*' 

Is  there  any  chance  of  our  modern  English  statesmen  taking  a 
leaf  out  of  Solon’s  celebrated  statute  ?  Or  are  the  ‘  ‘  legal  rights  ”  of 
our  territorial  autocrats  to  stand  in  the  way  of  all  justice  and 
humanity,  until  the  people  at  length  are  driven  to  redress  them¬ 
selves  ?  Solon  saved  the  landlords  of  Attica  from  themselves  :  is 
there  no  savior  to  appear  for  the  Irish  exterminators  and  rack- 
renters  ?  Jpsi  viderint. 


“Hist,  of  Greece,"  volii.,  pp.  36-38-9. 


APPENDIX. 


541 


ABSENTEEISM. 


“Although,”  says  Dalton,  *  “there  has  been  a  series  of  legal 
enactments  to  prevent  its  (absenteeism)  ruinous  consequences 
here,  and  no  less  popular  remonstrances  from  that  period  (1710) 
to  the  present,  all  have  been  successively  more  ineffective,  as  the 
following  comparative  table  of  the  amount  of  absentee  rentals  of 
various  periods,  on  the  most  approved  authorities,  may  evince  :  — 


“  Amount  of  Annual  Absentee  Rental. 


1691  . 

£136,018 

1729  . 

627,799 

1782  .... 

2,223,222 

1783  .... 

1,608,932 

1804  .... 

3,000,000 

1830  .... 

4,000,000 

1838  Now  (as  he  says)  nearer  . 

5,000,000. 

At  this  rate  the  annual  drain  would  amount  at  this  moment  to 
the  enormous  figure  of  £6,000,000. 

How  will  the  coming  Irish  land  measure  deal  with  this 
terrible  fact?  Can  a  laud  bill  not  grappling  with  it  in  real 
earnest  be  deemed  at  all  satisfactory  ? 

Not  satisfactory,  it  would  be  better  by  far  the  measure  were 
never  introduced. 


*  “  History  of  tlie  County  of  Dublin,"  p.  85. 


THE  END.. 


ERRATUM. 

Page  17,  tor  Boyle  read  Bole. 


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